Personal brand is one of those terms that gets used all the time in the professional world. But when five women who have spent a long time in the insurance industry sit down and talk about it properly, it becomes a very different conversation.

That's what happened at the CIWA Women Webinar: The Women Behind the Brand - Real Stories, Real Impact. The panel was made up of Shawnae Bentley, VP of Strategic Partnerships at OIP Insurtech; Holly Valiquette, owner and President of Pacific Inspections; Anita Nevins, Founder and Co-CEO of Direct Connection Advertising and Marketing; Sarah Sloan, President of Small Commercial at Paragon Insurance Holdings; and Yana Connors, CEO of Sickles Specialty and President of CIWA, who hosted the session.

What followed was less a formal presentation and more a genuine exchange on careers spanning decades, moments of doubt, and the reality of what it takes to build a reputation that lasts.

Your brand is what people experience, not what you say

The panel kicked off with a straightforward question: what does personal brand mean to you? The answers very quickly all came down to the same thing.

"Your personal brand is your reputation," Shawnae said. "It's what people have come to know about you. Do you show up? Do you follow through? Do you treat people well even when there's nothing to gain? Your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what people have actually experienced from you."

Holly reinforced that point with a practical exercise. Think about the last five people you've worked with. If you interviewed them, what would they say about working with you? "I think the answer to that question is your personal brand," she said. "It's not what you say about yourself; it's what people actually experience when they work with you."

Anita added a useful framework for anyone who wants to pressure-test their own brand. Pick three or five words that describe how you'd like to be seen, then ask the people you know whether those words reflect how they experience you. The gap between the two is where the real work lies.

Growth often starts with discomfort

Several of the panelists spoke of defining moments in their careers that all had one thing in common: they weren't feeling prepared at the time.

Shawnae had a story that was quite unrelated to the office. While she was an underwriter at Nautilus, traveling all the time and juggling three young kids, she decided to go back to school. She would wake up at 3 am to study, work through the night, and did that for years until she completed both her undergrad and then her master's.

"What stuck with me wasn't the degrees themselves," she said. "It was the realization that I was capable of doing something very difficult during a period of my life which was itself very difficult. I learned to trust myself a little more in that I could work things out even when it was all a bit overwhelming."

Holly took a different route to visibility. She's a very reserved person and wasn't one to go out of her way to promote herself. She got involved in industry associations and eventually became the first woman President of ARCO (the trade association for insurance inspection companies). "Visibility isn't necessarily self-promotion," she said. "You don't have to change your personality to be visible. Your contributions are your self-promotion."

Relationships over transactions

A thread that ran through the whole of the conversation was the difference between networking as a transaction and networking as a relationship that actually lasts.

Shawnae was very direct about that. "You can pick up 100 business cards at a conference, but trust takes time, takes consistency and takes genuine interest in the other person." She linked that directly to why she was instrumental in setting up WISE, having been in that position herself early in her career and wanting to help other women to feel like they belonged.

Holly gave a very specific example of what that looks like in practice, citing Shawnae herself. "She will constantly go out of her way to introduce me to people and get me into conversations. I've actually met people and formed new relationships as a result of that. The single most important thing you can do is invest in the success of someone else."

Sarah added that visible presence is not about being the loudest person in the room. "It's about being known as someone who follows through, who helps people develop and who is there to add value. That's what builds genuine relationships."

Showing up is the work

The webinar finished with a bit of reflection on what it means to say yes before you're ready. Say yes to joining the board, say yes to taking on the role, say yes to speaking in the room, say yes to posting on LinkedIn, say yes to walking into the conference. Every single panelist had their own version of that.

The takeaway was the same: the brand is built in the doing, not in the planning.

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