First Quad-A conference for women advisors builds foundation for the future

Being a financial advisor is being "in the business of changing people's lives," according to Tammia Rowe, the first Black market director for JPMorgan Wealth Management in North Texas.

Rowe made the remark in a panel at this week's first-ever conference of the Women's Impact Initiative Network of the Association of African American Financial Advisors, which goes by the nickname Quad-A. In the discussion in Chicago with advisors and executives from JPMorgan, Merrill, Edward Jones and other high-profile firms, Rowe and the other speakers shared the professional lessons they learned navigating a challenging profession amid the massive underrepresentation of Black women in the field and pledged to work together in an effort to support each other as a group of trailblazers and lay the groundwork for the next generation.

Moderator Clara Sierra, a senior director and industry practice lead for asset management with Moody's Analytics, asked Rowe if she could "say it one more time for the people in the back."

Clients who may have been through traumatizing tragedies or divorces are "going to be better when they walk out than how they walked in," Rowe said. "We are in the business of changing lives. It's not just about the numbers. It's, how are you going to make people better?"

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Stark figures drawing industry buy-in

Rowe and several of the other panelists are exceptions to industry metrics — fewer than 24% of certified financial planners are women, and only 2% identify as Black or African American. Besides showing the slow pace of progress, the ongoing lack of representation is bad for clients; studies suggest clients aren't receiving the best possible services from financial firms that don't hire and advance women. And Black women, on average, face long odds when it comes to building investment portfolios and retirement nest eggs: They earn 64 cents for every dollar made by white men and have about 90% less wealth, according to the Urban Institute.

That context added more significance to the event, which was attended by dozens of advisors and other industry professionals, than the standard wealth management conference. 

Quad-A's event drew sponsorships from Wells Fargo Advisors, JPMorgan Wealth Management, Merrill, Commonwealth Financial Network, Fidelity Investments, Edward Jones, TIAA, Thrivent, Truist, LPL, Ameriprise, RBC and Baird — companies that supported the creation of a place for Black women advisors "where they can be uniquely who they are and be with people who are just like them," according to Sheena Gray, the interim CEO of Quad-A and a former Chase branch manager and human relations executive with JPMorgan Wealth Management.

"We couldn't do this without you," Gray said in her opening remarks at the conference, noting that the event marked the first of what is planned to be an annual gathering for Quad-A's Women's Impact Initiative Network in her hometown of Chicago. "This is not the end. This is the beginning."

Gray and interim Chairman Alex David, the division director of the northeast for Raymond James Financial Services, began in their roles last month after a vote by Quad-A's board. The organization decided to pursue a "different direction" from prior leadership. 

In his opening remarks at the conference, David said the event was "a big deal," considering that he didn't "know of one other time" in his three-decade career that the wealth management industry had focused its attention in this manner on Black women in particular.

"This is historic," David said. "All of the major firms have gotten together to collaborate and curate and really applaud and welcome Black women financial advisors and professionals."

READ MORE: Unmarried Black and Hispanic women hold least wealth in U.S.

The panelists talked about pivotal moments in their careers. For Nneka Serwaa Constantino, a vice president and senior financial advisor with the St. Paul, Minnesota-based branch of Merrill, one of those times included a conversation in the gym with a white man who was a top producer at the firm. He told her, "You don't need me or any other white man in this room to close business. You have to have more confidence in yourself," she said.

"It wasn't nice, but it was the not-nice that I needed to hear," Constantino added.

Another crucial turning point came when Constantino, who admitted she felt "very insecure when I started in the business," came up with the idea to target prospective clients who were laid-off executives from local companies. Doing so took convincing herself that "an older white male can see me as an authority in their financial life," she said.

"I felt that I was too young, and I just felt that I was in this very not diverse environment, and I didn't really know how to establish myself as a leader," Constantino said. "They stay with you. They stick with you. They feel like you've been in the trenches with them. It works for the client. It works for me, because I felt that I didn't fit in."

Tobias Salinger

Building for the future

Marie Taylor, a West Hempstead, New York-based financial advisor with Edward Jones, recalled achieving a milestone moment in her advisory practice when she guided a couple through a sharp market downturn. The tough work of adding them as clients had taken about five years, but their portfolios amounted to $1 million, Taylor noted. However, the stock and bond losses had pushed the worth down to roughly half that amount within a few months.

Taylor reminded the clients that, "You're on a plane," that is still being flown by a pilot and that, "You're getting to your destination," she said. The clients remained with her practice.

"Sometimes these are hard discussions to have," Taylor said. "That was a lightbulb moment because I knew I had done my work in explaining it."

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The panelists also spoke about the importance of encouraging women to pursue careers in the profession and aiding those trying to find their path to success. Sometimes, women "are not doing enough to help each other," and "the only way we're going to do it is if we help each other," said Cary Carbonaro, a senior vice president and director of women and wealth services with Ridgewood, New Jersey-based registered investment advisory firm ACM Wealth.

In an effort to reverse that trend, Carbonaro and other certified financial planners attended the Girl Scouts' national conference last summer.

"You have to see it to be it. Can you see us? You can see us here. Can you see us in the industry? Not that much," Carbonaro said. "I actually talked to hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of girls who didn't know what a CFP is. … It was really planting seeds for the future."

Rowe described boosting the next generation of professionals as a passion of hers, notingthe importance of "great mentorships that can turn into sponsorships." 

A mentor can lend advice that assists their protege in defining their goals and achieving them down the line, especially in financial fields in which women are often vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts. A sponsor could go even further by mentioning their protege's name when it comes time to fill an important opening.

"Find someone that you admire, that you look up to, that you've watched for a while and reach out to them," Rowe said. "A sponsor is going to be that person or persons who's going to be able to say your name in a room that you're not in. And that's powerful."

READ MORE: Lack of diversity in the financial industry is hurting women long-term

The available numbers suggest that a common narrative about women being the future inheritors and controllers of vast amounts of wealth may not apply to some of them, Constantino said.

"For Black women that's not happening, and we've been handling the wallet of the Black family since before the civil rights movement," she said. "We have to know the data as financial advisors. Embrace it, but then say, 'What are we going to do about it?'"