Lauren McKinzie hears people say often that they stumbled into insurance and she says: "I definitely fit into that camp." McKinzie started her career in the bridal industry, working at Kleinfeld Bridal, a dress shop in New York City. She later worked in real estate and then got into insurance.
"I like to think of it as they're life milestones. Getting married, buying a house and then you need to protect those assets," she said. "I love to help people and I feel like that's what insurance is. It's ultimately giving peace of mind and protection when there can be so much uncertainty in life."
McKinzie is currently the operations manager, channel partnerships for Obie Insurance, an insurtech that focuses on real estate. McKinzie leads the management of over 100 embedded partnerships for Obie. She previously worked at Policygenius, also on a partnership team. She describes partnerships as finding moments with other companies where they can make it easy and seamless to purchase insurance.
Obie's partners include lenders, property managers, institutional funds and other startups in the real estate space.
"At Obie we're not just selling an out-of-box technology solution to our partners," McKinzie said. "We're building this technology for our partners and [they] work along our product and engineering teams to figure out where we can meet partners where they're at. How can we make this simple? We aren't just deciding to build something and then trying to fit it in."
The company recently made some new hires and McKinzie is most excited for the opportunity to learn from them during an off-site meeting in Chicago, where she is based. "It's great to get to work so cross-functionally with everyone," she said, adding that she's constantly getting to learn. "What I think is fun about insurance is it's extremely important, complex and there's always a challenge to be solved."
She shared that her number one trait for any leader is empathy. "I also think you have to be passionate because you want people to follow you and be excited. I think that passion is something that cannot be faked, people can see right through that. When people have true passion, where you lean in, I personally love to see that in leaders," McKinzie said. "The other piece of it too is, I think as a leader, being comfortable being a little bit vulnerable because if you want to inspire that transparency it comes from you as a leader."
McKinzie added that her younger sister, who went to law school, recently started working in the insurance industry.
"I think what's cool about the industry is there's so many facets. I think people don't realize that, they think of insurance and think of an insurance agent but there's underwriting, engineering, partnerships, revenue, marketing and everything that comes with that. … It's an industry that is ever changing and evolving."
McKinzie also started a Women at Obie Slack channel to bring women together at the company. "I wanted to feel like we had our own space to talk and share ideas," she said. She also led the company's programming for International Women's Day which included some women leaders sharing challenges they have faced and how they have overcome them.
