On the fifteenth entry of our See It to Be It podcast series, Amy C. Waninger speaks with Rose Zilinskas, a results-generating personal lines underwriting professional with experience in positions of increasing levels of responsibility. They talk about her introduction to the insurance industrym, what kind of degree is best suited for pursuing a career in underwriting, and the importance of self-advocacy at work. Check the links in the show notes to connect with Rose!

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TRANSCRIPT

Zach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, every now and then we try to mix it up for y'all. So look, dependency and consistency is really important, but even within those lanes of consistency, you gotta have a little bit of variety, you know what I mean? You don't come home and just eat the same thing every day, or even if you do--you know, you got a meal prep thing--maybe sometimes you put a little red sauce. Maybe sometimes you put a little green sauce. You know, you gotta just, you know, mix it up from time to time. Maybe sometimes you grill it. Maybe sometimes you saute. Maybe sometimes you rotisserie. You gotta just--am I hungry? Yes, I'm hungry, y'all. My bad. Listen, check it out. We have another entry for y'all from our See It to Be It series. Amy C. Waninger, CEO of Lead at Any Level as well as the author of Network Beyond Bias, she's actually been a member of the team for a while now, so shout-out to you, Amy. Yes, thank you very much for all of your work here. And part of her work has been in driving this series called See It to Be It, and the purpose of the series is to actually highlight black and brown professionals in these prestigious roles, like, within industries that maybe we--and when I say we I mean black and brown folks, I see y'all--may not even know exist or envision ourselves in, hence the name of the series, right? So check this out. We're gonna go ahead and transition from here. The next thing you're gonna hear is an interview with Amy C. Waninger and a super dope professional. I know y'all are gonna love it. Catch y'all next time. Peace.




Amy: Rosie Zalinskas, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?




Rosie: I am doing well, Amy. How are you?




Amy: Great. It is so good to have you on the show today, and I was wondering, could you tell our listeners a little bit about what it is that you do?




Rosie: Yeah. So first of all thank you very much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. It's very exciting. So what it is that I do, I am, by trade, an insurance underwriter. So I work with AIG, which is a property and casualty insurance company, and an underwriter actually makes a decision whether we're going to sell coverage to an insurer. So that's kind of, like, the basis of what an underwriter does. Not a lot of people really know what an underwriter is because we're behind the scenes, so when you go to your insurance broker the broker says, "What kind of insurance do you need?" The insurer says, "Well, I need auto or home owner's insurance," and they just--they know that they're applying for something and they have the broker to have the conversation with, but behind the scenes the broker sends the application to the insurance company, the underwriter reviews the application, and then we analyze everything and we say, "Yes, we're going to take a chance and we're going to sell you insurance." So people don't really know that from an underwriting perspective we do that behind the scenes. Now, my role right now is a home office role, so it's a little bit more country-wide, but by trade that's what an underwriter does. 




Amy: So people can think of an underwriter in insurance kind of like a loan officer at a bank, is that correct? So you're not selling a policy. You're deciding whether someone is a good risk for your company for that type of policy.




Rosie: Correct. And some people may say that we're a little bit of inside sales because we do have conversations with brokers, we vet the risks, and then we kind of figure out how we can customize our product to sell that coverage to the insured.




Amy: Okay, excellent. And I know some underwriters specialize in a particular line of business. Some underwriters do only, let's say, fire risk for manufacturing facilities for example, something very specific. Do you underwrite a lot of different lines of business or are you specific to one type of risk or one type of industry?




Rosie: Well, we're actually a niche company as far as high net worth property and casualty, so it actually ends up being your standard home collections, excess liability, auto of course, but because we're in the high net worth echelon we're a niche product,




Amy: Okay, excellent. So someday I aspire to have you underwriting my policy is what I'm hearing. [both laugh]




Rosie: Me too. Mine too. [both laugh]




Amy: Perfect. So this is not--as you said, this is not, like, a high-profile position that you read about on the news a lot or you see, you know, celebrity bake-offs to try to get your job. So how did you learn that this job existed, and how did you land in this role?




Rosie: So the way that I learned about this job was through school. When I was at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, we actually had an entire department for actuaries. I actually went to school to become an actuary. I decided that I did not want to be an actuary when I graduated from school because I didn't want to study for all the tests and go down that path. It just wasn't for me. So through the university, Prudential Property and Casualty came and did some interviews, and that's how I learned about the underwriting position. It was a perfect fit for me. So I started in the underwriting position straight out of college. So that was kind of the genesis of the start of my career, but as far as how I ended up in my role now, it's just been a progression of various different positions and obviously experience and moving up the ladder, and then just the bigger thing is being proactive, you know? Being proactive about what it is that you want, what it is as far as your career, you know, really figuring out where you want to go. So there's been a lot of that for me. Every three or four years I feel like, "Okay, what's next?" And then that's kind of when I start looking for the next position.




Amy: Thank you for that. I want to go back to--you said, "I looked at this and I thought, "This is the perfect position for me."" What is it about the role, but also about your strengths or your particular characteristics, that made underwriting a good match for you?




Rosie: So an underwriter has to be very analytical. We have to make a lot of decisions. We make decisions all day long, so you're always analyzing the risk, looking at a bunch of different tools that you have to figure out if this is something that you want to approve or decline. So it was a good fit for me because I was able to work with brokers, I was able to work with a team, and that's a little bit different from an actuary because the actuary is literally behind the scenes. They're creating all the rates. They're doing, you know, crunching numbers all day long, and to me this was a good mix because although it's very analytical, you still have a lot of interaction with the brokers, and you're making decisions and you're impacting people's lives. So to me it was just a better fit than, you know, number crunching all day long.




Amy: Thank you for explaining that, because I think outside of the insurance industry a lot of folks see actuaries and underwriters as sort of the same thing, don't really understand the difference, but I think it's difficult when you're young, you're in college or you're early in your career, and people are throwing around these terms, and you don't really understand, like, "These are the things about me that I want to use," right? Like you said, "I want to be analytical, but I don't want to be locked in a closet." [both laugh] And so I think it's important to draw those things out and say, "Okay, if you're analytical but you can stand to talk to people all day, this is a great fit because it's sort of the bridge between the salespeople side, right, that's all sales and all people, and the actuarial side that's all analytical and not at all people." Excellent. So now that you've been in the industry a little while, what has surprised you the most about it? 




Rosie: What surprised me the most is that the majority of the time when people ask me, "Hey, Rosie, what do you do?" And I say, "Well, I'm an insurance underwriter," and they're like, "What's an underwriter?" You know? So as I continue on my career that kind of still surprises me today because I think the underwriting field is much more common than it was when I started way back when 27 years ago, but I think that's the biggest thing that surprises me. And even, like, today, when my children, who are 18 and 21, when they're asked, "What does your mom do?" They're like, "I don't know. Something in insurance." You know? It's like, "After all these years?" So in my family it's the same thing. So that's what surprises me, that people still really don't know what an underwriter does.




Amy: Yep, I would agree with that, and I've seen that myself. And it's frustrating, right? Because you think, "Wow, I'm out here saving the world, like, literally protecting people from loss of life and property, and nobody even knows who I am or what I do." [both laugh] So let me ask you this, 'cause I know when I approached you about doing this interview you said, and I hope I'm quoting you accurately, "I'm 100% Mexican, and I'm an underwriter, and