Leadership

President
Portland, OR

My journey to be an advisor was always influenced by the women in my life. It was my grandmother who gave me my start with a $5,000 gift upon graduation from high school to encourage me to attend college. My mother recommended I invest the funds and helped me start my first mutual fund investment. Seeing the money grow and using it to help pay for school helped grow a feeling of empowerment in me.

My first job out of college was working in the call center at the same credit union I still work at 23 years later.  The advisors in the office invited me to go to lunch and talk about the basics of investing. A passion for financial planning was born. I had strong and supportive women in management who advocated for me when opportunities arrived and fostered my career growth.

More recently, my husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.  And, I have two teenagers at home who keep me running with their activities. I’m so thankful I found this profession that allows me the flexibility to align my family priorities with my values. In my spare time, I love to cheer for my Kansas City sports’ teams, read, and plan grand travel adventures.

Becoming the President of the WLA is an honor I take very seriously.  Encouraging other women to pursue a career I love and feel fulfilled by is a mission that I am excited to lead.  I feel that the WLA is at a pivotal point as an organization.  Our initiatives are in place and are making an impact.  We are ready to spread the word and expand our reach.  It’s time to grow!

Treasurer
Jenkintown, PA

My financial advising career began in the summer of 1983 as a 21-year-old intern at my dad’s office. Until then, I didn’t understand how much he enjoyed working with people and how much they loved working with him. He had chosen financial planning as a second career when I was 14 years old, and while he wasn’t a certified financial planner, he understood people and the stock market and had created a business around building relationships and helping people make money for their lives.

I remember watching him leave before dawn and get back after dark. That wasn’t exactly a lifestyle I wanted but I saw how driven he was and how excited he got as he told me some of the success stories.  From an industry standpoint, the Dow was breaking records and recovering from the doldrums of the 1970’s. It was an exciting time! I had planned to major in dietetics, but ended up ditching it in favor of business. The reality was that I was dietetics major in order to help people live a healthier lifestyle so, at least to me, choosing business and financial planning was just a different way to help folks live a better life as well.

After I became licensed in 1984, I opened my first account with a very large initial purchase.  I built the relationship and he was working with me, not my father. Many of my father’s colleagues (all men) assumed my father had given me the client. While it was frustrating to be a woman and have people make that assumption, my father and I knew the truth. He had taught me to get to know a person and learn what they needed and help find a solution for them.  This new client respected me for how I was helping invest for his retirement.  Our Women’s Leadership Alliance (WLA) was created to help change this conversation.  We want to help women today by mentoring, coaching and showing them ways they too can succeed in this industry.

Even today only 16% of financial planners are women, but I would bet there are many more if we counted women who work in the offices as support staff, not just those who have a nameplate. I have three women who work with me and we operate as a team. While these women may not want the responsibility of running the firm, they are integral to the client experience we’re creating at our office in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.

Not only do I love helping people, just like my dad, I wanted a career that showed my children their mom is strong; I wanted them to understand they could be anything. Growing up, they saw me working long hours but now they understand. My son & daughter now see what I was working toward and how good I am at what I do. That alone means the world to me.  I also want to be an example for other women interested in this career. I am involved with WLA because in 35 years in the industry, I’ve always found tremendous value in working with a business coach and I want to share some of that with others. There are plenty of motivated women out there and the WLA can help more of them find their path.

Secretary
Dallas, TX

My mother was a trendsetter. She got her PPE at Oxford University before there were Rhodes Scholars and was a stockbroker before women were really allowed to be in those spaces. She went out and grabbed life and just said, “I’m going to go do these things.” She was a very powerful influence on my life.

I want to share that influence and that strength with young women and encourage them to consider a career in financial planning. In fact, it’s crucial that they do, so more women are represented in this industry. We bring an empathy to the table that’s important for helping people through some major changes in their lives.

I want women to know that they can do this job, and they can be there for their families at the same time.

That’s a balancing act I learned over many years. I started as a floor trader for Goldman Sachs on the New York Options Exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange and the International Petroleum Exchange. After working as a natural gas trader and hedging strategist in San Antonio, I made a dramatic change and became a Full-Time Mom for about 15 years to raise my children, Graham and Cate.

But I never really stopped working. I needed a ‘sanity saver’ and I found that in volunteering. I worked a lot with my church, the Greenhill School, the Junior League, and The Texas Women’s Foundation. I eventually decided it was time for me to know what I didn’t know, so I got my CFPÒ license and eventually joined Carter Financial.

The beauty of this industry for women, is the flexibility. In fact, before I left the workforce to be a full-time mom, a friend of mine suggested I get into financial planning so I could stay in the workforce while raising my kids. It took me about 15 years to come around to the idea, but it turned out that she was right, and it’s been the best decision.

I think we need to do a better job of making sure young women know that flexibility is possible. You can do a financial plan at 11 O’clock at night, or while you’re breastfeeding. It allows you to stay in the mix and not lose your sense of who you are.

I’m excited to help the Women’s Leadership Alliance raise funds so that we can increase outreach to women in colleges and high schools to introduce them to these opportunities.

Portland, OR

My fingers would fly across the keyboard of my softly humming IBM Selectric typewriter. I always prided myself on speed but was looking for a different way to excel. Through my 20s, I worked at the elbow of executives running industry-leading corporations. On the secretary track, my understanding of business accounting and skill at putting together financial data wasn’t enough to give me an escape from making $2.10 an hour or the bosses who expected me to work through the weekend. At 30, I decided to take my knowledge, go back to school, and leverage it all into a new career. In 1979, I became one of the first women in the western United States to be a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional.

Growing up, the kids in my family were conditioned to earn our own money. Whether it was picking berries or beans, we learned about hard work, loyalty, and what it meant to earn and save. Those experiences gave me a strong sense of responsibility for my own welfare and taught me to take care of others. Today those skills dovetail beautifully into my career advising clients. An attorney friend once told me that I was a social service dressed up as a financial advisor and he was right! Financial planning is a caregiving profession.

I remember taking a business course in my early 30s with a roomful of men. The instructor singled me out, trying to make the point that women were emotional and that you couldn’t “wear your emotions on your sleeve” with clients. On the contrary, I believe female advisors’ emotions and ability to feel things is a resource, not a problem. I believe the more we can connect with people and understand them, which is certainly a female trait, the better off we are as advisors and the more successful we are. Today, I lead McGee Wealth Management, a firm run by three senior advisors – all women. I’ve made the Top 1,000 Wealth Advisors in the U.S. list every year since 2016*. Turns out, having emotions can pay off.

By giving keynote speeches and writing extensively on the topic, I’m working to attract more women into the field of financial planning. It can be daunting for some because you’re making decisions and you are responsible. You’re right on the firing line and that can scare women. But, I believe, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” We need to help the world see successful women in this business so females considering financial planning can believe it’s possible. At the WLA, we are painting that picture.

*Barron’s is a registered trademark of Dow Jones & Company, L.P. All rights reserved. The rankings are based on data provided by over 4,000 individual advisors and their firms and include qualitative and quantitative criteria. Data points that relate to quality of practice include professionals with a minimum of 7 years financial services experience, acceptable compliance records (no criminal U4 issues), client retention reports, charitable and philanthropic work, quality of practice, designations held, offering services beyond investments offered including estates and trusts, and more. Financial Advisors are quantitatively rated based on varying types of revenues produced and assets under management by the financial professional, with weightings associated for each. Investment performance is not an explicit component because not all advisors have audited results and because performance figures often are influenced more by clients’ risk tolerance than by an advisor’s investment picking abilities. The ranking may not be representative of any one client’s experience, is not an endorsement, and is not indicative of advisor’s future performance. Neither Raymond James nor any of its Financial Advisors pay a fee in exchange for this award/ rating. Barron’s is not affiliated with Raymond James.

Asheville, NC

You won’t catch me drinking coffee. This has nothing to do with avoiding caffeine. I learned early on in my career that I had to set myself up for success and that meant keeping a level playing field with my male counterparts. Back then, the men would tell you to fetch them a cup of coffee. I would always say, “I don’t drink coffee, so I don’t know how to make it.” It kept me from falling into that stereotypical role.

I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Heels!) There I took a class on investments, which I was very interested in, so I chatted with the professor after class one day to learn more about a possible career path. That’s when he told me, “You’ll never make it in this business.”

Boy, did I prove him wrong.

After years of working for several different companies, I started my own firm in 1995 in my hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. Webb Investment Services focuses on helping people, specifically women, find financial freedom.

I feel it’s so important for women to have control of their finances. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a lot of women who are very passive about money. They allow their spouse to take the reins. It’s not until a major event happens like divorce or death that they wish they’d known more. I want more women to know that money allows them to have more choices in life. It’s a big reason I started the podcast, Her Two Cents. My co-host Faith Doyle and I share our own experiences and expertise. It’s a great way to get our message across on a broader scale.

I’m also very passionate about bringing more women into this industry. Women make great advisors, but as I’ve learned the hard way, it’s not always an easy career path.

I’ve been a donor to the Women’s Leadership Alliance since its initial development – now I’m proud to serve as a WLA board member. The women of the WLA aren’t just fellow advisors, they’re my colleagues and friends. I’m excited to share my knowledge and help uplift other women in this industry.

And at the same time, give women the freedom to have their coffee and drink it too.

Coral Gables, FL

I was 40 years old and flipping through a magazine when I first read about this new career of financial planning. The industry was in its infancy and many people thought the concept was bogus; but I was intrigued. In a prior career, I’d worked in the “think-tank” world in California, completing long-range planning for the Stanford Research Institute and then doing allocation models for United Airlines. I had a lot of corporate planning skills I could apply to individuals. I was a “late bloomer” because I found financial planning at midlife, but it was perfect for me because I liked solving problems, making a difference for people, and I wanted meaningful work.

I’d grown up as a first generation Chinese immigrant in Mississippi; and as a female minority, I had gotten used to being different. If you’re Chinese, you’re going to talk about money; regardless if you’re a man, woman, or dog. Money is just part of our culture. I remember my mother would ask anyone and everyone how much money they made. I’d tell her, “You don’t ask questions like that!” But, she was the consummate Asian mom and didn’t mind asking anything. I eventually got comfortable asking my clients all those personal financial questions too!

I’ve been called a trailblazer and I have always advocated for women in the industry. In 1992, I helped start the Raymond James Women’s Advisory Board; an internal organization focused on fostering opportunities for women. I’ve also been featured in national publications; including Money, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Advisor magazine. For nearly four decades, I’ve led the Starner Group of Raymond James & Associates, an invitation-only wealth management practice with more than $1 billion in assets under management.

From the start of my financial planning practice I’ve always wanted to give women a voice in financial decision-making. I decided early on that if I worked with a couple, the woman would be heard. I’m an advocate for each of my clients. Financial Planning is not just a paycheck or what you save.  Financial Planning is about achieving dreams and wishes. I help people figure out why they are making money and why they are working so hard.  After all, you don’t want to have “I died with six million dollars” on your tombstone.

As a Vice President and a Founder of the Women’s Leadership Alliance, I am focused on sharing my own experience with other women interested in this field. I’m living proof that you don’t have to start in financial advising right out of college.  You can have multiple chapters to your career; and you can even put your career on pause for a while to be a stay-at-home mom like I did. Becoming an advisor at 40 worked out pretty well for me!  Financial planning gives me job satisfaction, financial security, and the chance to affect change in other people’s lives.  I just don’t want to keep that a secret.

Davison, MI

Growing up, my parents instilled in my siblings and me the value of education. My father was the first in his family to graduate college and my mother went to college also. For my mom to raise six kids and then be able to mold her own career once we were all in school was unusual at the time. Her life was a great example for me, my sisters, and the community.

From the time I was young, I wanted to earn my own money. And I was very certain when I grew up, the man of the family would not make all the decisions, especially about finances. First my high school business teacher and later a business mentor were influential in feeding that conviction.

That business teacher was married to a dentist (which meant she didn’t have to work). In fact, culture dictated that women stayed at home, but she ignored it, becoming a teacher who transformed our school’s business curriculum from steno classes to classes that got us ready for the business world, not just the secretarial pool. Often she would take students to visit different businesses. I admired her business knowledge … and fashion sense, too. She was always dressed professionally and she showed us that it was okay for women to earn their own money. Because of her, I became laser-focused on earning my own. Over the years, we’ve done more than keep in touch; she is now one of my clients!

When I started in the industry in 1975, I was an administrative assistant. My mentor, who ran the business then, was well established in his career. He took me to meetings to show me what he did for a living. I remember hearing often in meeting these stories about how clients’ lives had changed in significant ways. He mentored his clients and it was awe inspiring to me. I’d hear, “Because of you…” followed by a story of how a family was able to take a vacation, a couple was able to buy a house, parents sent their kids to college. A dentist told us how he saved $75 per month for 25 years at the suggestion of my mentor and eventually became a millionaire. It was stories like these that inspired me to become a financial advisor.

Today, I am the President of Stephens Wealth Management Group.  The same firm where I got my start now bears my name. I’ve made top advisor lists in Michigan and nationally in publications including The Financial Times and Barron’s. I feel recognition is important to attracting and mentoring young women who are considering the financial planning industry. I am involved with the WLA because I am tired of talking about getting more women into this profession and want to take action to be part of the solution. Part of changing the conversation, is mentorship. By showing what’s possible, we hope to launch more women into a profession that has been extremely rewarding for me.

Crystal River, FL

My life changed with a simple interaction. At the beginning of my career nearly 25 years ago, I was working in an insurance agency as a customer representative. Although I enjoyed the interaction with policy holders, I knew I wanted more from my work. Fortunately, the manager of a local bank noticed me, and made me a job offer to be the assistant branch manager. A bank didn’t seem to be the place for me, so I declined.

About 18 months later, that same bank manager called me from a Raymond James office to tell me about his career change. He moved to Raymond James to become a financial advisor, and he thought this was the kind of career I was looking for. He shared that the role of an advisor is so much more than investing. This it is an opportunity to truly make a difference in the lives of clients, while helping them reach their financial goals. I felt that I should talk to my boss about my future, before I made any decisions. It turned out that my boss didn’t see me having a significant role beyond what I was already doing, so I knew it was time to make a change. I accepted the position at Raymond James, and have always appreciated the effort made by a few key people to enlighten me about this all-encompassing way to work with people. I may not have had the courage to talk to my boss about my future if I had not had the encouragement that I could become more.

As a female financial advisor, I’ve faced challenges, including the assumption that a man must have helped me build my business because, “Girls just don’t do this kind of work.” Although many men have been role models for me, and I’m sure for other women, it’s perseverance and a passion for the business that has been the foundation of our accomplishments.

When I look at my career path, there’s no reason I should be where I am today, as the branch manager of the Crystal River office of Raymond James & Associates. One of the keys to my success is that one person took the time to call me and ask if I was interested in learning more about the industry. That’s why I’m involved in the WLA, and what I want to be for others – the person who sees individual potential, and acts on it in a meaningful way. I believe, in order to grow the number of women in financial services, we need to share our stories.

Emeritus Board President
Dallas, TX

Around the dinner table growing up, my two sisters and I never discussed money with our parents. I am a fifth-generation Texan and, at that time, there was this attitude that women and girls didn’t really need to know about financial matters. Men handled the money. I went off to college and was one of the early classes in which women were admitted to Dartmouth. I took an economics class but could never get the professor to call on me when I raised my hand, after attending an all-girls high school for 8 years prior. A rude awakening indeed!

It wasn’t until seven years after graduating and having launched a career in retail, I was introduced to a wonderful CFP®, a gentleman who convinced me that I should join this noble profession. I am so grateful for his encouragement. I resigned from being a buyer at Neiman Marcus and started taking CFP® courses at night while remodeling homes by day. It was a leap of faith indeed. I met my future business partner in the CFP® classes. She convinced me to come interview at the firm she had recently joined. I joined Quest as an unpaid intern in 1991.

I started out making the coffee, answering the phone and making copies. After joining RJ as an advisor in 1993, I started working with the two partners of the firm, making sure the clients were happy. The next ten years, I focused on building my practice alongside working on the firm’s clients. With a lot of help from the partners at the time and my business partners today, and with the help of Strategic Coach, I’ve been able to build my practice to what it is today.

I am President of Quest Capital Management. As a firm we manage and custody over $1.1B for about 600 families. I am so grateful to have been steered towards this profession. When I started, I was one of only a handful of females at advisor conferences. The face of the financial advisor must mirror the investing population. The WLA exists to change the conversation and encourage more women to become great advisors.

Jacksonville Beach, FL

When I set off for college in 1969, I decided to study the only subject I was interested in AND was socially acceptable in those days for women: Education. I graduated, left Minnesota and found my way to Florida to be a teacher where I later earned a Master’s Degree in Counseling and Psychology. To this day, I use what I learned to help my clients.

Back then, teaching and counseling jobs were scarce, so I went to a recruiter who suggested insurance sales. I joined a five year training program and soon learned the men in the program earned significantly more than the women. At the time, the differential didn’t bother me but looking back I wish it had!

In those early years, I discovered that I don’t like to sell to people so I decided that rather than selling, I was going to survive this business by finding people to help. I found them in tree farmers and their families in southern Georgia, some of whom are still clients today.

To help those tree farming families, I had to learn about their business. It became clear the farmers wanted to keep the land in the family for generations which took estate planning, insurance, and financial planning. As I grew my book of business, my income increased. It didn’t matter that the men on my team made more to start, I outpaced their production over time. More importantly to me was that I was helping people.

In the late 1980’s I started at Raymond James. For years I was one of the only women in the room. Eventually, I started my own financial planning practice and became a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. While I struggled for the first year, I was able to grow it to the thriving firm it is today.

The reason I am passionate about the Women’s Leadership Alliance is because the industry has been slow to change and I believe it will take generations for women to see their value here. Many think financial planning is about money or math when it is really about building relationships and helping people … like my tree farming families. The message I like to share is the one I learned early in my career: Financial planning is not about selling, it’s about helping.

Kirkland, WA

How I arrived at the person I am today, is the result of taking the best from what I learned growing up and using my innate qualities to achieve what I wanted in life. All of which was enabled by mentors.

I grew up on a dairy farm in the mid-west, where daily chores were distributed among everyone in the family regardless of gender. However, the same cannot be said for the way allowances were allotted. This was my first exposure to the double standard that still exists today when it comes to compensation. I worked alongside my four brothers and a younger sister but only the boys received an allowance. My father believed I would just spend it carelessly and didn’t need to learn how to handle finances, my future husband would take care of that. This philosophy infuriated me then and still does today. It did however, serve as a catalyst for me to become the first one in my family to attend college. I dreamed of being an English teacher and poet. I attended the Undergraduate University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop which has produced many well-known writers over the years. College was a turning point for me. For the first time in my life, I was defined not by my gender but rather by my own thoughts and ideas.

While in college I was encouraged to pursue my dreams by several mentors which cemented my passion for learning. After graduating I achieved my goal of becoming an English and creative writing teacher. I moved to Montana to work. Met and married my husband and then travelled to Europe to teach at the International School of Brussels. I taught English and creative writing and he taught chemistry. Teaching, travelling and being independent fed my appetite for learning and appreciation of other cultures. Upon our return to the U.S. we moved to Seattle. Unfortunately, Seattle was in the midst of a teachers strike and I ended up doing temporary accounting work for a local entrepreneur and financier, Paul Schuler.

Paul saw in me the business acumen I never realized I had. He taught me to trust my instincts and to always be willing to take a calculated risk. He encouraged me to further my education and I earned my MBA. Paul’s untimely death, three years later created the next life shift for me. I was co-executrix of his estate and through that process met many attorneys, accountants, investors and other financial professionals. I realized I liked being in the midst of it all, coordinating, coaching and problem solving. I had heard about a field called financial planning but there were few women on that career path in the mid-eighties. Being one of the few was my incentive to make financial planning my next adventure. I became a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. After getting certified, I gathered all my experience, a pad of paper, a pen and opened my own consulting business.  A calculated risk.

Over the span of my 30+ year career, I have been fortunate to have cultivated many long term investment and financial planning clients. I was a pioneer in developing a niche in the divorce planning area, gave lectures and wrote 2 books on the subject. The Fair Share Divorce for Women books were my way of helping women overcome the lack of financial training they either didn’t have or gave up during their marriage. I have benefited from the wisdom and helping hand of several mentors in my life. And feel deeply that the best way to expand the number and roles of women in the financial planning industry, is to foster the sense of community through mentoring programs like WLA. Succeeding in this business takes patience, time and mentors to show you the way.