By the © International Finance Corporation 2021. All rights reserved.
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As Managing Director of AAR Insurance, one of Tanzania’s prominent medical insurance providers, she has helped over 60,000 Tanzanians access affordable healthcare. Given Tanzania’s high out-of-pocket healthcare costs that disproportionately affect women and poor households, Violet’s team at AAR Insurance developed low-cost health insurance products for both individuals and families and for people working in the informal sector.
As the Chair of the Medical Council of the Association of Tanzania Insurers, Violet is working with regulators to create an enabling environment for the country’s medical insurers so that they can provide better and more affordable healthcare benefits.
FROM OFFICE MESSENGER TO CEO: After completing high school in Nairobi, Kenya, Violet could not afford to go to college immediately. At age 19, she began working as an office messenger for an insurance company to earn money. The ambitious young woman engaged with her colleagues and showed interest in learning more about the technicalities of the insurance business. “I was curious about what my colleagues s were doing—their work was highly interesting to me.”
She says that this combination of curiosity and her desire to advance her career drove her to seek better opportunities. Violet knew that higher education was important to advance her career, so she began studying business administration. Then she found an opportunity at Pan Africa Life Assurance—first as a customer service officer and later as a public relations assistant. She believes that her organizational skills and her innate curiosity to understand insurance products impressed her female supervisor who gave Violet more responsibilities and mentored her. When Pan Africa Life expanded into Tanzania as African Life Assurance, Violet welcomed the chance to return to her home country.
She became part of a four-member transition team from Kenya that was responsible for establishing the Tanzanian operations. Violet was the only woman, and the only Tanzanian on the team, and her job was to support business acquisitions and customer service. She helped prospective customers understand the different insurance products, what they covered, and how insurance worked. This helped her to develop a deeper understanding of the insurance landscape in Tanzania.
Her managers noticed Violet’s good performance in Tanzania and sent her to participate in a year-long leadership course in South Africa. She graduated among the top students in her class of 38 men and 7 women from several African countries. After returning from her course in South Africa, Violet continued to rise within African Life Insurance, and she was subsequently promoted to operations manager. She finally achieved her dream of earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Violet’s experience at African Life Insurance was vital in building her self-confidence and feeding her aspirations to rise to higher leadership positions.
In 2011, after six years at African Life, Violet became Deputy General Manager at AAR Insurance, and in 2013, she accepted an opportunity to become Executive General Manager at Metropolitan Life Assurance. Both positions prepared her to take on the role of Managing Director at AAR Insurance three years later.