Topper Carsten

Background

About Topper Carsten

I started my professional career learning what I did not want to do. Out of college I was looking for a job and not a career. I started of in Claims with Canal Insurance. I quickly learned that this was not a long term fit for me but I also realized that it gave me an opportunity to work on my weaknesses. Confrontation is an area that I struggle in, and that position dealt with tough situations everyday. I am grateful for the opportunity to grow as a person through this experience but after a year I went on to try and find something I enjoyed. I then moved to the Risk Management department within Canal Insurance doing loss control. During my time I helped develop several different spreadsheets to help companies that we insured understand the losses they were experiencing and hopefully provide them with the information necessary to limit these losses in the future. I was then promoted to a Loss Control Specialist meaning that I was to travel around my designated territory (the Southeastern United States), and work with all of our insured customers in that territory. This finally gave me the opportunity to combine my data analysis skills with my desire to help others. I spent over two years traveling around and working with these companies to try and help them prevent tragic accidents while also limiting the losses that Canal would experience in a claim. After two years I came to the realization that my path led elsewhere so I decided to enter into the Clemson University MBA program. Through this program I was able to sharpen my skillset and learn valuable information that would help me grow in my professional career. I focused on courses that would enhance my knowledge of business strategy and data analytics. During the program I found an internship at Lincoln Energy Solutions. I was first given an audit to perform where I would several hundred thousand dollars that the company was owed. After that I was given several other projects of increased difficulty. After finishing the program I was given a full time position as a Logistics analyst. In this roll I am responsible for logistics in half of the markets that we supply ethanol in. There is also a large piece of my job that focuses on analyzing market price movements in ethanol to determine the best strategy to execute given the market movements. I have been in this roll since January of 2021.