Carol Voorhees has worked at NJM long enough to know one almost-certain guarantee: When someone learns she’s employed by the state’s home-grown insurance giant, the conversation usually starts with one of two subjects:
- NJM’s commercials;
- NJM’s annual rebate checks.
At a recent meal at a restaurant in Lambertville, Voorhees heard something else — something that gave her the biggest joy in her first year as the company’s CEO.
A woman approached Voorhees mid-meal to praise “Rosa,” a claims rep in NJM’s Parsippany office who had walked her through a complicated problem with a rental property.
“She was so excited because Rosa was so patient with her,” Voorhees said. “It was awesome.”
Her rise
Carol Voorhees is proud of being the first woman CEO at NJM — prouder of the fact that company culture helped her reach the top. See story here.
It wasn’t surprising. Voorhees, who has been with the 113-year-old company for 30 years, knows its culture of customer service is well established.
But it still was a source of pride, an example of the range Voorhees says defines the job: part brand recognition, part policyholder gratitude, and — every so often — a reminder of exactly what the company is actually selling.
“We’re a service organization that just happens to sell insurance,” Voorhees says.
And does so in a bigger geographic region than ever before. NJM sells commercial insurance in six states, personal insurance in five.
BINJE spoke with Voorhees about all of this and more as she capped a year into her role as the company’s 10th CEO — and the first woman to serve in the role, a distinction she wears with honor.
The conversation has been edited for length, clarity and story flow.
BINJE: Take me back through year one. What surprised you, expected or not?
A: Voorhees says the biggest adjustment wasn’t strategic — it was emotional. After 30 years at NJM, including eight on the executive leadership team under her predecessor, Mitch Livingston, she expected the transition to feel seamless. It mostly did, she says, but with an unexpected wrinkle.
“It was kind of like coming back for your senior year of high school,” she says. “The building is the same, the people are same, but you just feel a little bit different.”
Voorhees credits support from employees and the community for easing what could otherwise have been an uncomfortable step into leadership.
“I feel that so much support, and I can’t say enough about how that makes it easier as you step into that leadership role,” she says.
BINJE: Let’s talk about “the different” — being in the top job. How would you describe your approach to the leadership required for the role?
A: “Collaborative,” Voorhees says, tracing the instinct back to her early career in NJM’s IT department, where she gravitated toward project management over the technical side of the work. “That’s really where my passion lies. When I can work in teams to problem-solve, I’m having a good day.”
She says that mindset carries directly into the CEO role.
“I got all these talented people who know what to do, who are committed to our mission, committed to our policyholders,” she says. “How do you get the most out of them? How do you facilitate them in a way that gets the best outcomes?”
BINJE: Let’s turn to the business model: NJM expanded significantly geographically under Livingston, branching out to six other states in some capacity (Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Delaware and Maryland). Where does that strategy stand now?
A: Voorhees describes the current strategic plan as an evolution rather than a break from what came before. She says the focus has shifted from entering new markets to strengthening the company’s position within them. (NJM sells commercial lines in six states, personal lines in five).
She points to the commercial side as the clearest example. Historically, NJM built its commercial book almost entirely around workers’ compensation and commercial auto, which meant business owners often had to go elsewhere for other types of coverage.
“One of the opportunities we had on the commercial line side is because we only served a portion of the business,” she says. “When a business owner wanted to place their insurance, they would come to us for a couple of products, but they would have to go to a different carrier for the other products. That was creating friction for us.”
BINJE: How is NJM addressing that friction?
A: By building what the company calls its “total insurance solution” — a broader commercial package that adds property and general liability coverage alongside NJM’s traditional strengths in workers’ comp and commercial auto, so a business owner can place more of their coverage with NJM instead of splitting it across multiple carriers.
“We’ve stepped into a broader package,” Voorhees says. “So that we can write more holistically for a business owner. It’s our goal to be known as the total insurance solution for people.”
BINJE: Big growth can be a challenge to customer service and corporate culture. How is NJM ensuring what made it successful in New Jersey will be a part of how it operates in other states?
A: “We know New Jersey like the back of our hand,” she says. “Now we have to figure out: can we translate everything about New Jersey to these new markets? Probably not. There’s uniqueness to Ohio versus Connecticut. We have to figure that out.”
There is one thing that’s universal, Voorhees says.
“What has made us successful in New Jersey is what cannot change — and that’s how we think about policy, how we think about service, how we think about our mission and our mutual operations that we operate for the benefit of our policyholders,” she says.
BINJE: Here’s a question that’s universal for every company in every sector: How can you, should you, incorporate AI into the workplace? How is NJM using AI?
A: As an enabler, not a replacement, Voorhees says. She describes NJM’s approach as targeted at freeing employees from repetitive back-end tasks — billing, claims processing — so they can spend more time on the service work she says defines the company.
“It isn’t technology for the sake of technology,” she says. “What are the business problems we’re trying to solve? How do we make it easier for our service reps to service our policyholders?”
Voorhees is firm about where the technology stops.
“It’s always going to be human in the middle for us,” she says. “We’re not looking to offload our service, our value proposition to computers and to robots.”
BINJE: Even after more than 100 years, some may still not realize that NJM operates as a mutual company, without stockholders. How does that shape decision-making?
A: Directly, Voorhees says. Every strategic decision, she says, gets filtered through the question of policyholder benefit rather than shareholder return.
“How does this benefit our state? We don’t have stockholders. We have policyholders,” she says. “Then, how will we ensure that we can be here for another 100 years? It’s through expansion. It’s through growth. It’s through operational efficiencies.”
BINJE: Final question: What do you want people to understand about NJM as you head into year two of your tenure as CEO?
A: Voorhees returns to something Livingston used to tell her.
“We inherit NJM,” she says. “We are stewards to the things that make us special.”
That, she says, will never change.
