Everyone has a money story: Win Havir tells the story that inspires her

Every individual and family has a money story — that history or narrative that inspires the way they save and spend. 

For Winona “Win” Havir, that money story begins in World War II, with her widowed grandmother desperate to save her children from Japanese invaders threatening their home in China. Havir’s grandmother put her three children on an American ship leaving the port of Shanghai in hopes of saving them from the Japanese. One of those children was Havir’s father. 

But the ship was captured, and Havir’s father ended up in a wartime prison camp. Three years later, the Americans liberated him and took him to the Port of Los Angeles. Relying on the generosity of strangers, he finished high school, worked three jobs while attending college, married and started a family, and went on to have a 40-year career in education.

Havir’s father’s story formed the foundation of her work: first as a teacher, then as an advisor who worked with a culturally diverse population and now blending the two professions to serve public school employees. She is executive vice president, business development with Educators Insurance Resource Services of The Horace Mann Companies and is based in St. Paul, Minn. Horace Mann is the largest financial services company serving America’s public school employees.

Her work in promoting diversity in the insurance and financial services profession was recognized when the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors presented her with its 2023 Diversity Champion Award.

Havir was born and raised in Los Angeles, growing up with her China-born father and her Hawaii-born mother. She recalled that even though her father had a Ph.D., the constant cry in her family was “We have no money.”

“All the time, all we heard was, ‘We have no money,’” she said. She recalled standing in line with her family to obtain government-issued cheese and powdered milk. But she said that even though her parents kept saying they had no money: the family always had a roof over their heads and didn’t go hungry.

Still, even after obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Havir said the feeling of not having any money didn’t leave her. 

“Money is a very emotional issue when it comes to making decisions,” she said. “For some of us, money brings up some gut-wrenching reminders. My money story was unhappy, even though I was able to afford some things.”

Later, she learned that her parents had taken out life insurance on her, which enabled her to attend college and graduate debt-free.

Despite the feeling of having no money, Havir said her parents taught her to always be grateful for the opportunities she had and to look for ways to give back.

“We were so grateful to be in this country, to be in a place where we will not just survive but we will thrive physically and financially,” she said.

 Havir’s parents also taught her the importance of education, of learning to speak several languages and speak them well, and of presenting oneself well.

“My parents spoke Chinese at home but they didn’t speak to us kids in Chinese because they didn’t want us to end up speaking English with an accent. They knew that to be accepted by the community and society, we had to speak English well,” she explained. “My father enrolled me in French classes when I was in elementary school, then I had Spanish classes in middle school. When I reached high school, my father said he wanted to send me to school in China to learn Chinese.”

An education beyond the classroom

After attending school in China, Havir completed her college education and began teaching school in Los Angeles. 

She soon realized that many of her students and their families needed financial education in addition to the education that traditionally takes place in a classroom.

Her college roommate’s now-husband suggested that Havir would be a good candidate to launch an insurance career in a part of East Los Angeles where half the population was Chinese and the other half was Latino. At his urging, she completed a LIMRA questionnaire to determine her propensity to succeed in the business, and she scored well on it.

“There was an insurance agent who served that area, but he died in a motor vehicle accident,” she said. “The company was looking for someone who knew that community and could speak the languages. I thought this would be a way to touch and change more people’s lives, while at the same time I could make a greater financial difference for my family and myself.”

One of the first things Havir did after she took the job was change her name to something easier to pronounce.

“Nobody could ever pronounce ‘Winona’ correctly, so I shortened it to ‘Win,’ and I went by the name ‘Win Harding,’” she said. “It sounded very ‘insurance’ and competent and aggressive. People would call the office and ask to speak to Mr. Harding. And I would say, ‘He’s not here; he can’t help you, but I can.’”

Scaring away the ‘financial ghosts’

Early in her career, she realized that her clients needed more than insurance. Many of them needed to go back to financial basics.

“In some of the countries where my clients came from, they didn’t trust financial institutions,” Havir said. “So here in this country, people would work two or three jobs and put money away, but their money would end up stashed away in the freezer or under a mattress. People didn’t have bank accounts, they didn’t use credit, they paid for everything in cash. So, what happens is that people become financial ghosts. When the time comes that they need to get a loan or they need to have someone pull their credit score — they don’t have one, it’s like they don’t exist.”

Havir said many of her early clients needed help with applying for jobs, applying for a loan and buying auto or renters insurance. From there, she could discuss the importance of protecting their families with life insurance.

“Every day was an emotional high or low, helping clients handle what’s going on in their world, and then helping people understand about the plan they had in place and how that plan would execute, what would happen to their world should a devastation occur,” she said. 

“In this business, every day is different. You never know what will happen as it relates to the risk protection plan you have in place for a client and when it needs to kick in.”

Hooked on NAIFA

Havir worked her way up the corporate ladder for the carrier she started working for at the beginning of her career. She joined NAIFA in 1997 at the invitation of a woman who was a life underwriting supervisor at her company.

“She was also a woman of color, and she said, ‘You need to go to this meeting,’” Havir recalled. “She knew that my goal was to place a minimum of 100 paid life policies to protect 100 families every year. She said, ‘I believe this organization can help you become even better.’”

Havir attended her first luncheon meeting, “and that was it — I was hooked.”

What attracted Havir to NAIFA was that the organization “isn’t only about furthering your own career. It’s about helping people become the best insurance agent or advisor that they can be.”

She serves on NAIFA’s board of trustees and is a trustee liaison to NAIFA’s Diversity Council. She is a past president and charter member of the Greater Twin Cities chapter of Women in Insurance and Financial Services. She has been a panelist and speaker at NAIFA’s annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Symposium.  

“One of the things I wanted to do at NAIFA is to see more agents and advisors in the communities who look like the people we serve,” she said. 

Educating the educators 

Havir’s husband, Gary, is marking his 45th year with Horace Mann, and he convinced her to join the company.

“He said, ‘You have experience working in the inner city, you come from a multicultural background, you’re a former teacher. This would be a perfect place for you,’” she said.

At Horace Mann, Havir said, “We educate the educator by helping them understand what financial benefits may be available from the school district and how to make the best use of their hard-earned dollars.”

“We want to help public school employees keep more of their money in their pocket and make sure they take full advantage of the 403(b) plans that their school district might have available to them,” she said. “We want to help them have a secure retirement. We want to help them feel financially secure so that they can focus more of their energy on helping kids.”

She and her husband mentor several students, and she said those students come to them when their families need help navigating life’s obstacles. For example, one student called her in the middle of the night because the family’s electricity had been cut off and they didn’t know what to do. She helped them negotiate a payment plan with the utility.

It’s another way that she educates the public and follows her father’s admonition about giving back.

“My goal was always to be an educator, not just in the school system but to educate people about how money works and how to recreate people’s money stories — not stories of scarcity but stories of plenty and of gratitude,” she said.

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at [email protected].