The founders of a firm focused solely on promoting the visibility of wealth management professionals from underrepresented groups across the industry have shut it down.
Roughly two years after launching
"It's a lot for a small but mighty team to run. We didn't have the bandwidth to do that well in a sustainable, ongoing way," Dreizler said in an interview, noting the absence of any "huge revenue boost" as
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Financial advisors, entrepreneurs and other wealth management professionals paid tribute to Choir's accomplishments. They also expressed disappointment with the pushback against diversity programs at large companies among conservatives who view them as a corporate-sponsored liberal agenda. Moves by firms like
Prior to opening Choir, Dreizler and Gagnon — who were respectively a consultant on ESG investing and a wealth management public relations and marketing professional — shared the idea for Choir with an advisory board that included Tyrone Ross,
"My biggest takeaway is that they both took tremendous business and personal risks trying to disrupt the status quo in financial services media," Ross said in an email. "They not only provided opportunities for new voices to be heard, but served as a blueprint for how to be inclusive and diverse with a data-backed approach. To that end, it's no surprise to me it's been tough to survive in the existing climate, as 'DEI' and 'woke' have been co-opted and used to denigrate any effort for equity in the world, and especially in fin serv."
Dreizler and Gagnon "created Choir to make the financial profession better, and they accomplished that and will continue to do so," said Larry Sprung, founder of Hauppauge, New York-based
"Business decisions, like the one they just made, are always difficult but sometimes are needed for professional or personal reasons," Sprung said in an email. "They raised awareness of areas that were often overlooked and not discussed, sparking conversations that were needed. I am confident that they will still have an impact on the profession in their own way, just not through the entity we knew as Choir."
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Peggy Haslach of Mansfield, Massachusetts-based
As a lesbian planner whose clients "want to invest in their values," Haslach "subscribed, set up a profile and supported" Choir even though she was busy managing her practice and assisting Sheryl Hickerson of
"Sonya's passion for social impact investing got Choir in the room with top leaders in financial services who were ready to push DEI in their organizations and events," Haslach said. "Choir gave them a clear path to follow and the confidence that they were on the right track. This was evident from the awards and positive press Choir received. The industry was embracing change because of their work. Sadly, things changed when the 'war on woke' began, and companies started backpedaling on DEI, ESG and all the other 'woke' acronyms. This was especially true in financial services, which is still largely stale, male and pale. While some companies made positive changes, many dropped the DEI label out of fear of backlash and didn't want to pay for these services anymore."
Choir took on a demanding task in seeking to convince conference organizers to take a "leap out of the networking comfort zone" even though many of the event planners are "faced with tight purse strings" for their speaker agendas, according to Lisa Asher, a strategic advisor with the wealth management practice at consulting firm
"I do hope that the mechanism behind Choir can take shape in a different platform," Asher said in an email. "I do see LinkedIn as the ultimate professional activity hub, so it would make sense for something like this to develop there. Having a feature that more intentionally helps pros share their portfolio of speaking experiences and be sought for those engagements would be ideal."
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Dreizler shared some statistics about industry conferences between 2021-2024 held by organizers that applied for the firm's certification, including some that retained Choir as a consultant on issues of representation among their speakers or used the Voices search. Indigenous and Latino speakers, as well as "men of color" in general, comprised the most "acutely underrepresented conference panelists."
At 10% of speaker slots at events that did receive the certification and only 2% of them in those that did not reach the designation, Black men had one of the largest gaps. Minority women spoke in 11% of the slots at events that got the designation, compared to 3% of the spaces at conferences that didn't get the certification. As 58% of
Choir's efforts required "showing up with your full energy and excitement," Dreizler said. "If you're going to be pushing against the status quo, it takes a lot of energy. And I have not had that in the same degree or volume that I have in prior years."
The closing of Choir "makes me both proud and sad," when considering the achievements and the end of the firm, she said. In their Dec. 9 letter, Dreizler and Gagnon asked readers if they could "pass the baton" to continue the work.
"This work did not begin, nor does it end, with Choir," they wrote. "Many of you are also working to make financial services more inclusive, and more representative of the world around us. While this chapter closes for us, we hope our progress serves as a stepping stone for other people. For those of you shaking up financial services for good, we will be here to cheer you on and help in any way we can. And if you, or an organization you know, would like to formally partner to continue building what we started, let's chat!"
Many past participants and supporters have reached out to Dreizler and Gagnon since their announcement that Choir would be closing its doors for good.
"It's the feedback that has been the most gratifying," Dreizler said. "They were already brilliant experts, and Choir's platform helped connect them with opportunities so that their voice would be heard by many more people."
