A Woman's Tradition Lives On

Generations of female agents guide this business

Given the long history of New York Life, it’s not unusual to hear of agents whose businesses are grounded in a paternal legacy – passed down from father to son, or even to grandson. But in Yankton, S.D., there’s a family business with a difference: three generations of agents who are all women.

What could well be the only matrilineal, triple generation office in New York Life history really got its start by accident. In 1975, Jeanette Schramm spoke to her local New York Life office as a client and revealed that after 22 years in education, she was looking for a new career. She was offered one.

“I told the hiring manager that I didn’t know anything about selling life insurance,” she recalls. “‘Good,’ he replied, ‘Then we don’t have to reteach you.’” Schramm got the hang of it soon enough. Eventually she built a sizable business, especially among farmers in this town of 13,000, which sits alongside the Missouri River across from Nebraska.

When Schramm needed to care for her ill husband in 1990, she called together her seven children to see if any was willing to take over the business. “I didn’t want to leave my customers without someone to service their policies,” she explains. Daughter Mary Kay Cwach raised her hand.

“I’m a problem solver,” says Cwach, “and the people who come to us all have problems and goals.” As her last job was working on a farm with her husband, Cwach was initially reluctant about moving into the insurance industry, but “I wanted to carry on my mother’s legacy.”

As a New York Life agent, Cwach is a generalist. “With a smaller population and a farming community, we as agents must be knowledgeable about all products.”

In 2005, Cwach’s daughter, Julie Auch, left her job as a sales manager for a local radio station to join her mother and grandmother. She liked being able to work for herself at something that was already familiar to her. Auch notes that while her firm has never advertised its gender, she does see it as a selling point.

“We feel that, as women, we bring a lot of compassion and understanding to our clients,” reasons Auch. “And all of us are wives of farmers, which is an advantage in a farming community.” Her mother adds, “We have a caring attitude that’s important to people. In fact, our business is based on it.”

But more than anything, clients seem to like the idea that theirs is a business with continuity — and is well known locally. “Around here, they have to know you in order to trust you,” observes Cwach. For their part, the three women who joined the New York Life family of agents enjoy the fact that what they do is worthwhile. Schramm, who is now retired, notes, “When someone dies, there are a lot of problems, and we deliver a solution to many of those problems. That fact makes us invaluable to this community.”

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