Her Story
About Andrea
Andrea Liggins serves as Team Leader at the Nancy Arias State Farm Agency in Millersville, Maryland. With 21 years in the insurance and financial services industry, she began her career at USAA as an insurance sales representative, advancing through roles that emphasized insurance, financial services, risk mitigation, and compliance. She transitioned to State Farm after gaining extensive experience, including traveling to military bases nationwide to educate and issue policies. In her current role for the past 11 months, Liggins leads her team in sales production, audits work for compliance, networks, and manages client relationships while meeting her own production goals. She holds property and casualty as well as life and health insurance licenses for Maryland, Virginia, and DC. Her educational background includes graduating high school in 2001 and pursuing but not completing a bachelor's degree, supplemented by numerous ABA certifications in compliance, Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification, and Certified Risk Management Professional (CRMP) designation. Liggins credits her success to the work ethic modeled by her mother and emphasizes maintaining high integrity and ethical standards in all her dealings, never cutting corners for sales.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Andrea
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to the work ethics that I saw my mother have. My mother worked for her company for over 2 decades as well, and as a little girl, I just remember watching how hard she worked, and how much pride she took in the work that she did. I grew up having that as an influence on me. So I do definitely attribute my success to what I learned from my mom. And that's that can-do attitude, never give up. There's always tomorrow. If you have a bad day, sleep it off, because tomorrow's a brand new day. And whatever you didn't accomplish yesterday, you have a new opportunity to accomplish today.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I received was from a manager about 18 or 19 years ago who told me never sell yourself short. He said you have a lot more potential than you give yourself credit for. Stop thinking that you're not good enough or that you don't belong in the room with these other people. Take that confidence and carry it throughout your entire career. It was a pivotal mind shift for me.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would echo the same sentiment: Don't sell yourself short. Don't automatically disqualify yourself because you think you're not good enough or you don't have the education or background needed. Go in there with the utmost confidence. If you don't get it, it's a learning lesson. You can pivot and take what you learned from that experience and use it for the next one. But don't cut yourself short.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
It is very easy to feel burnt out when your work is nothing but sales. You can get very discouraged if you aren't producing the numbers that you need to or that you want to. So the challenge there is to find ways to continually motivate not only myself but my team when we get in these lulls.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Staying true to myself and my integrity is very important. I've always made sure that I'm held to a high standard, doing everything ethically with integrity. It's something that I would be proud of, that I can look back at in 50 or 60 years from now and say I did that right. I operate with a high level of integrity even though it's easy to want to cut corners for the sake of a sale.
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