Fast Focus
	Assurance is big on employee perks from dance lessons to fast cash for contributing good ideas and good people.
	Once a p-c producer, Gould built the firm’s benefits business, now runs it as COO.
	She’ll make a special effort to recruit college women to the business.

The Gould Life

Jackie’s World (Is A Very Cool Space). She turns Assurance into an adventure.

By  Louise Lague

[Page 2 of 4]

Born Jackie Batty, the second of four children (and the only girl) in Ankeny, Iowa, Gould grew up in a tradition of “strong, independent” women. While her dad was a building inspector for the city of Des Moines, her mother worked for 30 years as a market analyst at John Deere. “She raised me to be independent,” says Gould. “We’re best friends.”

She also revered her late grandmother Emma, who worked in the family gas station. “Grandma Emma wore blue jeans and knew stuff about cars,” Gould says. “Back in the day, she also sold vacuum cleaners door to door.”

At the University of Iowa, Gould majored in marketing and psychology. When it came time for job-hunting, she crossed off sales because she was “afraid” of it. “I’m not comfortable being outgoing.” And she ignored insurance because, well, “insurance was too boring.”

Instead she took a marketing job in Seattle with a software company.

A year later, “I packed everything into my little Nissan Pulsar, even my bike, and drove to Chicago.” She moved in with a friend and interviewed as much as she could. “I love Iowa but didn’t want to go back quite yet.”

Liberty Mutual hired her in 1989 to be a special products representative. “I worked with the salespeople as a technical resource, specializing in property insurance,” she says. “That job opened my eyes to what business sales could mean. It was consultative and personal. The job had a lot of room for creativity.”

Gould was no longer deterred by the fact that she’s not “a natural extrovert.”

“I discovered that selling is more about finding the client’s problems and bringing solutions,” she says. “It’s about persistent listening and following through. It’s about hearing your problem and thinking how I would solve it.”

So she moved into sales at Liberty, working the phones in a room full of desks. “We did cold calling, and if you got hung up on, you kept talking to save face. I hated it, but I learned to do it.”

The fun part was “getting to know what people do in their businesses. There are not many industries where, at the age of 25, you can sit down with presidents and CFOs of companies, people who own their company and are passionate about it. With every client I would take a tour of their operation. People let their guard down, and they really open up when they’re walking through the shop.”

After four years at Liberty, she spent 18 months at Arthur J. Gallagher, where she became a property-casualty producer. “I was better at everything between opening the door and closing the deal. I really liked that part in the middle where you try to solve the problem.”

When, in 1995, a former Liberty manager went to Assurance, he invited Gould along as a p-c producer. At the time, Assurance had just 60 employees. As in many smaller organizations, she had the chance to try a variety of jobs, even unassigned. “I have a habit of getting involved. I’m very challenging and hard on myself,” she says. “I’m always looking at what needs to be improved rather than celebrating what’s been done. I’m very comfy vocalizing my opinions—hopefully in a respectful way.”