Ngozi Nnaji: Bet on Yourself

No such thing as hard

Ask Ngozi Nnaji about the hardest moment of her career, and she'll pause to think. Then she'll tell you there hasn't been one.

“The work is not hard,” she says. “Yes, it gets busy sometimes. Yes, I get tired. But I don't look at it as hard, because I always come in with multiple solutions.” If solution A doesn't work, she's already planning B.

That mindset has carried Ngozi through 30 years in insurance, from underwriter and broker to agency owner, network founder, educator, and now tech founder. It's also why Michael Ley of HawkSoft nominated her, and why she's one of this year's three Women in Insurance award winners. “Ngozi is one of those people who makes you rethink what's possible in this industry,” he wrote.

For Ngozi, the recognition came at the right moment. “Sometimes it takes recognition like this for you to lift your head and be like, ‘I did accomplish something in that 30 years,’” she says. Winning among her peers “hits different,” and so did learning who nominated her. “Michael and I are going to change the industry.”

Outside work, she's raised four kids as a single mother. “I work this hard in the industry, but I also work this hard at home,” she says. Ngozi takes her work seriously, but not herself. With a laugh, she describes herself as a “gun-totin, motorcycle-riding, insurance professional.”

Ngozi is also a passionate advocate for LGBTQ causes, like the right to gender-affirming healthcare, trans rights in sports, and especially rights in the workplace. For her, it’s personal. Her daughter is transgender and together they fight the good fight to champion LGBTQ+ rights. It’s a cause Ngozi says doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, and one she proudly stands behind alongside her daughter.

Betting on herself

After 20 years in corporate insurance, Ngozi expected her experience and relationships to open doors when she started her own agency. Many didn't. Carriers, capital, and clients she'd counted on weren't there.

She says that moment grounded her. “The relationships will come and go. The acknowledgements will come and go, even though I appreciate them when they come,” she says. “But the work will speak for itself.”

She's candid that starting AKO Brokerage Services began partly out of need. She didn't want to go back to corporate America, and she assumed the agency would be temporary. “I was like, it ain't gonna last long,” she says. “Here we are, like, 10 years later.”

What it took, she says, was a decision to bet on herself and to put the effort she'd given employers into her own goals. “It's not for everyone. You have to have the stomach for it,” she says. “When you get the door slammed in your face, or the no’s, or you don't get the checks you were expecting, it gets challenging. But the reward is so much greater on the other end.”

The return on that bet, in her words:

“It made me a confident person. It made me a very vocal person. It allowed me to advocate for others who haven't been able to advocate for themselves.”

Filling the gaps

Ngozi's drive comes from a habit her kids tease her about: she notices every small detail no one else looks at. “I see the holes, I see the gaps, and I want a solution for them,” she says. Inequity in the industry is one of those gaps.

When she realized she couldn't be the only Black agency owner struggling for carrier access, she started calling other agents. Those calls became Black Friday events, which brought carriers, banks, and consultants face to face with Black agency owners. “She didn't wait for the industry to fix its representation problem,” Michael wrote. “She built the infrastructure to fix it herself.”

The events led to more than 50 carrier appointments across 10 cities, and then to The Black Friday Network, the first Black-owned network built for Black-owned independent agencies. It now has nearly 30 member agencies and turns three this November. During her tenure as chair of NAAIA's Agent Engagement Committee, she doubled the association's agent membership and launched its Affinity Program.

Ngozi also invests in the next generation. Ngozi founded Agent Alliance, teaches insurance at the HBCU level, and runs the Black Women of the Insurance Industry Sisterhood Conference, which now draws about 400 women a year. Her own line sums up the approach: “Recruiting plus retention equals representation.”

What drives all of it, she says, is helping people. “If we work together, if we collaborate, there's an opportunity to have so much more impact,” she says. “When I see that materialize in real time, that's so rewarding.”

Blkstk: for us, by us

Her newest build is blkstk, a platform that uses AI to connect the separate tools agencies use, so information doesn't have to be pulled out of one system and typed into the next. The goal is one workflow from lead generation to binding.

Ngozi built it from her own frustration as a small agency owner. “It's not any ordinary tech stack,” she says. “It's someone in the business, identifying those gaps and bringing a solution, versus a techie coming into the insurance industry and saying, ‘Hey, look what I have for you.’ It's for us, by us.”

She's clear that blkstk isn't meant to replace anyone. “It's not here to eliminate jobs,” she says. “It's to upscale those agents and producers who are looking to do more, write more, and make more money.”

She presented blkstk on stage at ITC this fall, and she admits it was nerve-wracking. “I'm standing in front of all these techies, people who've built multiple tech platforms, and here I am, a little agent,” she says. Then she stepped off stage into a crowd of people telling her they needed it in their agencies.

Building a tech company has meant learning a new playbook. Her earlier ventures ran on scrappiness. Technology runs on capital, so she's now learning the world of investors and seed funding. True to form, she won't call it hard. “I wouldn't say hard,” she says. “'Cause we're getting there.”

Building an ecosystem

An agency, a network, a conference, a classroom, and a tech company: people often tell Ngozi she's doing too much. She doesn't see it that way.

“It's all intertwined,” she says. “I'm working on the ecosystem, not working on four or five different companies.”

Each piece fills a gap the others reveal, and each one comes back to the same belief she started with a decade ago: do the work, and it will speak for itself.

Her message to women in insurance

Ngozi wants every woman in the industry to hear the same lesson her own career has taught her. Put the effort you give everyone else into yourself, and see what you can achieve. When the doors close and the answer is no, look for the next opportunity.

Or, in her own unfiltered words:

“They need to know they're bad bitches.”