On Friday October 2, 2015, a few like-minded people got together in the New York area to form the Real World Risk Institute.
The mission statement summarized by “real world” can be expressed more directly as:

• Understand model error before you use a model
• An intuitive understanding of probability without the fluff
  
• To talk the talk you also need to walk the walk
• "Data science" without overcomplication and sophistry
• How to do risk analysis without the nonsense
• When and if we model, we go from reality to models not from models to reality
• Take risks you understand, don’t try to understand risks you are taking
• Risk education should not aim at impressing a regulator but developing real-life competence

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Summary: We are about risk taking (front office) not just something called "risk management" (back office), which should never be separated from decision-making. Some academo-bureaucrats with something to prove have an incentive to make things look complicated, while real world risk takers with skin in the game do not have such insecurity; they are not ashamed of making those things that are simple simple! The real world require vastly more rigor than textbooks and it is a different type of rigor. Most of all risk requires maximal clarity of mind. As of 2025, we have had close to 1700 attendees, more than 60 repeats (one person came back 5 times); a eclectic composition: about 45 medical doctors, 20 military persons, 5 professional hackers (those we know of), 30 policy makers, numerous venture capitalists/entrepreneurs, traders, psychologists, bankers, small business owners, social workers, university professors, etc. We have also granted more than 1000 scholarships and financial assistance.

Check #RWRI on Twitter.

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The idea is also to revolutionize education by making it closer to the practitioner model. No academic without real word background should teach a subject that has real world implications. In November 2017, after 2 years and six sessions, we decided to hire instructors from past attendees who have real world experience in the work they are teaching.

The current team includes:

• 4 risk takers, former full-time traders (with combined experience of more than a century)
• 2 persons known to have an attitude problem
• 9 Phds (quant/math) with real experience, 3 businessmen, quants and advisors to hedge funds
• 3 UHNWI (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals)
• 5 persons who specialize in tail events in both theory and real-life practice
• 3 are probabilists with deep enough a knowledge of probability to respect practice and explain things with concepts and pictures