Omari Aarons-Martin (pictured), president and chief executive officer of the National African American Insurance Association (NAAIA), believes the insurance industry already has the Black talent it needs to diversify its leadership ranks. The problem, he argues, is not a shortage of qualified people but a failure to see the people already inside the organization.
Aarons-Martin's organization has grown from under 800 members in 2009 to more than 3,400 members across 33 chapters, including 10 new chapters added last year, the largest single-year expansion in NAAIA's nearly 30-year history. He attributes that growth to a rising need for connection among Black insurance professionals navigating distributed and remote work environments, alongside a broader cultural shift toward individualism that has eroded informal workplace mentorship.
“That sense of isolation is even more present,” Aarons-Martin said, pointing to the loss of informal hallway and elevator conversations that once built collegial trust inside organizations. “As African Americans, we grow up with the notion that it takes a village to raise a child, an African proverb rooted in a collective sense of responsibility. That is very different from what we're seeing in the mainstream across the US.”
Aarons-Martin said his work with insurance carriers and brokerages on employee engagement data consistently surfaces the same pattern: a concentration of Black and African American employees stalled at the middle management layer, unable to break through to senior and C-suite roles.
“When I've worked with organizations to answer that question, the answer never comes back as an issue of skill or intelligence,” he said. “It's really been an issue of visibility. We know that visibility creates the opportunities for people to move up in organizations, to take on stretch assignments, to lead cross-functional projects.”
He urges insurance leaders to audit their existing pipelines for overskilled, underemployed talent, such as an employee with an MBA working a front-line customer care role, rather than assuming new hiring is the only route to a more diverse leadership bench. Rigid entry-level career tracks, he said, make it structurally difficult for talented employees to advance several levels at once, even when they are clearly capable of doing so.
NAAIA's research partnership with Marsh has tracked the industry's progress on this front since 2018, beginning with the Journey of African American Insurance Professionals study and followed by the 2023 report, Next Steps on the Journey: Are We There Yet? Aarons-Martin said both studies point to the same conclusion: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have not materially shifted representation through the ranks.
“Are we moving the needle, or are we trying to check a box around our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives?” he said, adding that programs like employee resource groups and unconscious bias training matter, but only when paired with an everyday discipline of examining who is affected by leadership decisions and who is missing from the table.
As insurers across the US continue investing heavily in artificial intelligence and automation, as detailed in this publication's ongoing coverage of insurance technology and transformation trends, Aarons-Martin said human capital remains the industry's most durable competitive advantage. “There is no amount of AI generation that can replace the collective intelligence and brilliance of a group of engaged and inspired employees,” he said.
He framed the relationship between people and technology as sequential rather than competing. “We have to remember that AI is a tool for us to use as human beings, not the other way around,” he said. “If we keep that order in mind, people first, technology second, then we shouldn't have any problem understanding that people are the greatest assets in our organizations.”
That philosophy extends to how NAAIA itself approaches member development, an effort the organization details further in its broader reporting on diversity initiatives reshaping US insurance leadership, and in resources covering mentorship, sponsorship and career navigation for Black professionals entering the field, areas the publication has explored in its analysis of insurance talent pipeline and recruitment strategies.
The path forward requires insurance leaders to move past fear of saying the wrong thing and toward genuine curiosity about the talent already inside their walls. “Make sure they're at your leadership table,” he said, “so that the perspectives you need to make a fully informed decision are present with you as a leader.”
