The most common thing I hear when I tell someone I’m an editor for a magazine about — and titled — risk management is “Ummm…What?” The second most common thing I hear is “Ohhh…Like Ben Stiller from Along Came Polly“? The third most common thing is “Do you work with George Costanza?”

Yes, for one glorious episode of Seinfeld, George had to learn about risk management while working for the New York Yankees and since that show is so ingrained in the public conscious, that is the only exposure that many people have had to the concept. (Click the link to watch George “educate” himself on the discipline.

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When I started out, I was no different. When I got into this job, I knew just as little as Costanza did.

But ya know what? The more and more risk managers I meet, the more I realize that that is the most common way to enter the field.

Increasingly, kids are going to school to become risk managers and, someday, the pros in the field will less often say “I don’t know how I got into this role. I was a safety manager then I got promoted — that was 12 years ago.” But today, that’s the most common thing I hear when someone tells me how they got into risk management.

Don’t get me wrong — many of the best risk mangers I know arrived by accident. It’s just funny to think that almost everyone who now manages risk professionally once had a little George Costanza in them. Even me.

And just think, it only took eight short years for me to run into Kenny Bania in a coffee shop and hear him say, “I just stopped by to thank you. That risk management stuff you wrote for me is killer … It’s gold, Jared. Gold.”

What’s that? He said “Jerry”? And that wasn’t me? Oh.

Close enough.