Jenna Herrera, licensed World Financial Group (WFG) financial professional, lives her life with a single mantra: peace. It took her a few years to realize that 60-hour workweeks while raising children was not the way she would bring peace into her life—she needed another way.

As a single mom, Jenna worked her way through law school, only to discover that the post-graduate job offer waiting for her did not allow her to cover the loan payments she accumulated to earn her degree.  There was also no flexibility to be the involved-and-available mom she wanted to be. 

“I knew to live the life I wanted, and to be the mom my children deserved, I was going to have to own my own business. Become an entrepreneur,” Jenna remembers.

In 2014, Jenna attended a WFG business presentation that “stopped her cold.” The WFG opportunity was different than any other career prospect she had experienced. There was no “vacation package or notary stamp. This was helping families build real financial health. Including myself. That distinction mattered to me in a way that I never expected,” she said.

Four years later, Jenna was able to go full-time at WFG and she has been building her business ever since. Peace is the goal, and peace is what she leads with. “It’s something I am really big about in this stage of my life, “ she said. “Whether that’s a clean living room and a clean mind, or knowing where every dollar in the budget is going. Knowing that if something happens to me, my family will be okay. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but financial peace has a way of trickling into every other part of life, and for the past seven years, giving people that feeling has been part of my job.”

Building a Generational Legacy

Jennaʼs mission traces back to her grandparents. Her grandfather did everything right by the standards he knew. He saved, invested and planned to retire in 2008. Then the market crashed, wiping out a large share of his savings weeks before he was set to stop working. 

Her grandfather pushed his retirement a few more years to partially restore his savings; one Friday in 2011 the day he had waited for was finally here and he was able to have his last official workday. The next day, Saturday, Jenna’s grandmother had a stroke that left her paralyzed. They had no long-term care coverage. When she died six years later, Jennaʼs grandmother had no life insurance, so her grandfather covered the funeral costs himself. He was later diagnosed with cancer, another unforeseeable condition he had to navigate. Today, heʼs cancer-free, but living with dementia. His long-term care is made possible by the flexibility of — and income from — Jennaʼs WFG business.

Jenna’s grandparents’ lack of life insurance protection reflects a trend in the Hispanic community. According to a recent LIMRA study, only 40% of Hispanic adults report owning life insurance, leaving an estimated 20 million people without enough coverage. “Had someone taught my papa about protecting his assets, I know he would have done it,” she says. “He was disciplined. He just didnʼt have the strategy.”

Jenna says it starts with education plain enough that people can say, “I understand it. I feel comfortable. Why wouldn’t I do this?” It’s not that people don’t care about their families. It’s that they aren’t taught that financial protection through life insurance is a key element to a strong financial foundation.

“People are trying to figure out how to put food on the table, how to get their kids across town, how to take care of aging parents,” she says. “Life insurance is the last thing on their mind, and if they have thought about it, there is usually a misconception about what it costs or what it takes. This is one of the reasons I love what I do. I get to break those myths and help families.

Creating the Life Jenna Was Meant to Live

Today, Jenna is an advocate for women entrepreneurship. She grew up watching her mother stay home while her father worked, and for years she assumed that was the path she would eventually have to take herself. Then she became a single mother of two and realized a demanding, traditional career was not providing the flexibility she wanted to be present for her children. She wanted to be the one at every school pick up, every Christmas party, and every teacher conference.

Today, Jenna is a mother of seven running her own business. Her office is close to her kids’ school which allows her to bring them their lunch in person each day. And she has built a business that allows her to be home with her toddlers by four every afternoon. 

Jenna cares deeply about breaking the traditional “either-or” message that runs in Hispanic households—the traditional expectation that the mom stays home to raise the children, and the dad earns all the income. She wants to model a different path. “As women, why wouldnʼt we want to make an impact in our community, earn an income that supports our children, and still be the one who gets to raise our kids? In my opinion, it’s the best of both worlds,” she says, and it can change more than one family’s trajectory. “It might change everything for their kidsʼ kids.”

Jennaʼs advice to anyone weighing whether to bet on themselves is to stop measuring the fear of trying against the comfortable idea of staying put. Instead, measure it against the real cost of doing nothing. 

“Once you decide to go for it, you start finding the solutions,” she says.

She is candid that a profitable business takes years to build, at WFG or others, and that the willingness to be patient matters as much as the willingness to start.

A Good Steward of Protection, a Good Steward of Creating Peace

No family left behind is more than a catchphrase for Jenna. It’s the whole point of her career. 

Another LIMRA study found that 55% of women say they do not understand the life insurance underwriting process at all, and Jenna hears that uncertainty in her own client meetings. She believes her job is to demystify their confusion. 

“Underwriting is just a risk assessment,” she tells clients. “We can figure out whatever the results throw at us together.”

Growing up, financial strategies were not handed to Jenna either. She had to learn them, and now that she understands the importance of financial literacy, she wants to share her knowledge with anyone who will listen.

“WFG has given us the resources,” she says. “We need to be good stewards of that information. It can bring peace to your life.”

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World Financial Group Insurance Agency, LLC, World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Hawaii, Inc., World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Massachusetts, Inc., (In California doing business as World Financial Insurance Agency, LLC) and/or WFG Insurance Agency of Puerto Rico, Inc. – collectively WFGIA – offer insurance products.

California License #0679300

Headquarters: 6400 C Street SW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52499. Phone: 770.453.9300

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