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 4 of 4]

What she tries to inspire, both with the employees and the clients, is a sense of faith, in fact, assurance. “A lot of this business is about trust. And there’s a lot of mistrust out there. So we try to let everybody know we’re on their side.”

Lague is West Coast Bureau Chief.

Family: Husband, Rich Gould, is a vice president with Spraying Systems, heading its GPS guidance technology business. Three sons, ages 12, 7 and 4.

Home: A five-bedroom custom-built house in Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Ride: A 2004 Ford Explorer (“I need to seat seven passengers.”)

Favorite Toy: A 1980 white Vespa for buzzing around the neighborhood

Fandom: Her sons’ soccer, football, basketball and baseball games, plus the Iowa Hawkeyes

Best bar trick: Can recite all 50 states in alphabetical order: learned in fifth grade

Good works: Wrapping birthday gifts for underprivileged kids as part of Assurance’s ACT employee volunteer program. ACT also supports Shelter Inc., which provides temporary housing for abused, neglected and dependent children. Gould and ACT also support the PKD Foundation, a research organization for polycystic kidney disease, with a walk and a cash donation. Gould’s son Owen has PKD. She also volunteers for her kids’ schools.

Professional Organizations: The Council; board of the Professional Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois