A trailblazing lesbian financial advisor found her practice’s eventual successor as part of her plan to launch a new network for LGBTQ wealth management professionals.
Laura LaTourette of Dahlonega, Georgia-based Family Wealth Management Group picked advisor Ramona Maior to take over the practice, which uses LPL Financial as its brokerage and The Wealth Consulting Group as its hybrid RIA and office of supervisory jurisdiction. LaTourette and Maior, who is bisexual, announced the practice’s succession and the opening of the firm’s Rainbow Network for LGBTQ advisors and allies on the first day of Pride Month.
Maior and LaTourette met last year when Maior, then working on a specialty investment research and management team at the wealth management arm of MUFG Union Bank, reached out in search of mentorship after noticing LaTourette’s
Moving to LaTourette’s practice enables Maior “to help people who need representation, to be intentional with where I’m focusing my energy and resources on, and to provide financial literacy and counseling to others,” she said in an email.
“Being a foster kid and a bisexual female were identities I felt I had to hide most of my life. My religious family couldn’t accept my sexual orientation but serving in the Navy during ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ created a dynamic in my work environment that followed me throughout my future jobs. I felt both these aspects made me appear tainted and less than, so I felt I needed to continue to achieve to be able to legitimately stand in the same room with my peers,” she said. “When Laura and I connected, I felt like I could show up with her. She would not only accept me, but elevate and encourage me to be creative and expand on my ideas.”
Representatives for Union Bank declined to comment on Maior’s formal departure from the firm on March 1. The 10-year advisor and CFP had previous tenures with Vanguard and USAA.
LaTourette praises Maior for being “just so resilient, and she's picked herself up time and time again,” which LaTourette said is “what it takes in this industry.” At 62 years old, LaTourette intends to retire by the time she’s 70. In 2019, she and advisor Marci Bair started
“I want to build people in the industry and help them get to where I am,” LaTourette said. “I want it to be an industry-wide thing so that we're not only working in our small groups, but we're all taking care of what's going on in our communities.”
Besides
Many LGBTQ Americans express uncertainty about whether financial firms are welcoming to them, though, said Jean Lynn Dunn, T. Rowe Price’s insights leader for the firm’s U.S. Intermediaries Product and Marketing Group. Dunn has spoken with several financial advisors who have had “a lot of referrals and growth” after demonstrating that they’re LGBTQ-friendly through marketing, partnerships with local Pride groups and other means, she said in an interview. The Rainbow Network could add more pathways for potential clients and advisors.
“We know this is a growing community, growing especially in terms of buying power and investment power,” Dunn said. “They want to work with someone, but they don't know how to find someone that is an ally or a member of the community.”
After her independent move, Maior “really want[s] to advocate for the underdog,” she said in an earlier phone interview. In addition to working remotely from the Phoenix area on the handoff of LaTourette’s roughly 25-year-old practice, she says she would one day like to open a nonprofit focused on advocating for the removal of stigmas around mental health. Her decision to go independent reflects her own internal transition as well, she said.
“I identified with my trauma and with the situations that I experienced and felt that I was not good enough to be able to support clients. I struggled with that a long time,” Maior said. “There was always this inner challenge of, ‘Can I do it? Am I good enough?’ The biggest thing was really honoring myself and my worthiness.”
For LaTourette’s part, she said she’s now going to be sending any new clients to Maior and collaborating with her on existing ones as part of the practice’s succession. Maior is also the first member of the nascent Rainbow Network, with “another one on my radar” behind her and more on the way, LaTourette said, citing LPL’s network as a model.
“As soon as we start recruiting, I think it'll happen pretty quickly,” she said. “We need to be more broad about it, and the other thing is that the money's going out of the community.”
