As I reflect on International Women’s Day—a day to celebrate women from all walks of life who have had to fight for their rights to be seen and heard…I am reminded of my own career path and the obstacles I’ve had to overcome to get here. Here is 2024, a place where women are heeded for their input and perspective. Here is still a point of progress, with much work yet to be undertaken on the path to gender equality. Here in this space, in this time of advancement, on International Women’s Day, I resolve to share my professional journey.
By most standards, I am in the middle of my career as a professional, a female business owner, and an insurance agency principal. Owning an insurance agency was never part of my childhood career dreams. My father had founded his insurance agency a few years before I was born. Though the career path he chose interested me, I was determined to make my own way. I climbed through the ranks of my early insurance career selling worksite benefits in my early 20s, avoiding all ideas of following in my father’s footsteps. As the years passed, I grew frustrated with constantly being sidelined by aggressive coworkers and supervisors who felt more like competitors than collaborators. One boss, in particular, would scream at me on the phone in such a way that I learned to dread his calls, never taking them when in the car with a new agent I was training. I found myself disillusioned, suffering from severe anxiety, and dreading going to work each day for a career I had once loved.
A dear friend who had walked a mile in my young professional shoes in her day pulled me aside, dried my tears, and talked some sense into me. “GO take your insurance exam, Danielle. Don’t pass up the opportunity to work with your dad. I’d give anything to have mine back.” She was right, of course. No one in my career had ever wanted or cheered for my success more than my father. I studied hard, passed the test, and surprised him. He was delighted to begin my training and gave me a job immediately. I recognized his investment in me, and I worked that much harder to make him proud.
In the years that followed my joining my father’s insurance agency, I established our commercial insurance department. I attended additional insurance classes to learn all I could about policy development, insurance coverage, and how insurance companies operate. I cold-called and networked. I quoted insurance late into the night, falling asleep at my computer quite often, then doing it again the next day to lay the foundation for a promising career I had become enthusiastic about. The more people I helped, the more people sought after my expertise. We were growing, and it thrilled me so.
Despite all the growth, there were many moments when fear and doubt crept in. A commission-based income could be frightening in the first few years as one learns the art of the sales cycle amidst establishing a home and family. I found my niche by quickly forming a genuine personal connection with someone at their workplace. I’d learn their office dog’s name and their favorite bakery. Perhaps we’d chat about their grandkids or college days. Once I built trust and rapport with them and earned the opportunity to review their insurance policies, I would differentiate myself from my competitors by identifying and correcting coverage gaps in their insurance protection. I learned that this was the only approach that would work for me—a young female professional in the heavily male-dominated career field of commercial insurance. I could not pretend to be a sports fan to break the ice. I did not golf or show up for beers at the bar after work. The “good ole’ boys” relationship-based club was closed to me as I could not rely on my social circle to guarantee my workflow. Showing up authentically and working hard to uncover potential coverage issues were the only tools in my toolkit, I wielded them liberally. I successfully built a department brick by brick, policy by policy, using the knowledge I’d gained from my classes and field experience.
There were moments in those early years when I learned much about myself and interpersonal communication. I loved working with female business owners the most, but statistically, female business owners are not the majority. Most of the male business owners I encountered were respectful, but there were times I was bombarded with the occasional lewd comment or sexual advance. I soldiered on to the next lead and kept my head down, learning even from the disappointments and failures. The seeds of my future agency’s female empowerment stance were being planted even then.
Several years later, it was time for my father and career mentor to retire. He offered me the opportunity to purchase his insurance agency. I was thrilled to use what I had learned to streamline our processes and position us on a solid growth trajectory. I had researched technological upgrades that I knew we would need to implement in order to operate more efficiently. It was January of 2020, and what an unexpected year awaited us then with a global pandemic! I was suddenly thrown into a position of managing continuous changes, which was not the leadership role I had prepared for. We survived, and I dare say we thrived when we banded together as a team to support one another through significant process changes under my still very green leadership. We shifted from a paper-based, technologically lagging insurance agency to a local technology leader specializing in video presentations, creative insurance solutions, and work-life balance for our employees.
Through all these “wins,” there were some demoralizing letdowns. I came to realize that even many years after I began my insurance career going door to door, women are STILL treated “less than” men. As a predominately female-staffed agency, we face unique challenges even today. Last year, a customer sexually harassed one of my agents in her office on a day I was working from home. My blood boiled as she recanted the story of his actions on the phone. I felt the guilt and anger well up within me as I realized—he would not have felt so bold had my father still been the agency owner in the next office. We considered several courses of action, but ultimately I encouraged my agent to file a police report for domestic violence on company time. She would be taking a stand for all of us, and paying her to do so was the least we could do to say thank you. I contacted the offender’s insurance carriers and explained why we could no longer serve his insurance needs. His homeowners insurance carrier took a particularly empowering stance against his act of violence and sent him a cancellation letter due to a “substantial change in risk.” My agency team member was awarded a protective order against him, with a charge on his record. We celebrated the victory together and all felt a sigh of relief.
On other occasions, angry men have yelled and cursed in our ears in ways I imagine they would never dare speak to another man. Those men believe that this is an acceptable way to converse with women when they do not like how an insurance policy functions and feel the need to question our intelligence. We are not the agency for them, and we have bid them a good day and farewell. I never imagined so many years before, in my cold-calling days, constantly seeking my next paycheck, that someday I would actually ‘fire’ customers. However, in instances like these, I do my part to take a strong stance against violence and aggression towards all women by telling those men that their behavior is not acceptable. Violence and aggression toward women are met with zero tolerance at Ellis Insurance Agency. Period. However, this issue is much larger than my small business and my individual experience.
To bring about an actual cultural change, we must rise together—men and women, business owners and coworkers, parents and educators, politicians and voters alike to show no tolerance for individuals who discriminate against women solely based on their gender. The reason we must continue to celebrate International Women’s Day is that discrimination is still happening to women every day. These micro and macro aggressions occur more than what is reported, arise in greater numbers beyond what we hear about in the news, and indeed happen to countless wives, daughters, sisters, etc. Until every woman has the opportunity to climb a career ladder with the equal respect her male counterparts are endowed, we must sound the alarm.
At Ellis Insurance Agency, we are a team of professionals who take great pride in our knowledge and care for our customers. We are women who love our jobs and deserve to come to work in peace and safety. Together, we can create a world where every woman can thrive, lead, and be heard. Happy International Women’s Day to those of you who blazed the trail, those of you yet to join us, and all of us still in the middle.
