Planner Anna N'Jie-Konte's vision lends 'Poder' to launch of her RIA

The Spanish word for "power" in the name Poder Wealth Advisors reflects how financial planner Anna N'Jie-Konte aims to help women exercise it through the launch of her firm, she said.

Anna N'jie-Konte

N'Jie-Konte has set a goal of nearly doubling her current client base of 32 households with a focus on tax and wealth planning for women after rolling out the new Baltimore-based registered investment advisory firm in online announcements at the end of last year and leaving her prior firm, Re-Envision Wealth. Her RIA's brand nodded to the trillions of dollars in wealth that's expected to flow to women in coming decades, she said in an interview.

"Most women, I would say Gen-X down, have recognized that there's a lot of power and necessity in managing their money and having a really solid handle on their finances and increasing their financial sophistication," said N'Jie-Konte, who was one of Financial Planning's 23 People Who Will Leave a Mark on Wealth Management in 2023. "I think there's so much strength and so much power in someone taking charge and taking proactive measures in thinking about where they want their wealth to go and being intentional about it."

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Two years ago, she and former business partner Keith Beverly had created Re-Envision with ambitious growth goals, but N'Jie-Konte elected to depart the firm last summer in order "to serve the people that really needed me in a way that was sustainable for myself and my clients," she said. Nevertheless, Re-Envision has itself doubled in size to nearly $130 million in client assets since they opened the firm officially on Juneteenth in 2023. The firm will be expanding further soon with the upcoming addition of another senior financial advisor, said Beverly, who was on FP's list of the 22 People Who Will Transform Wealth Management in 2022.

"The firm did a great job serving clients during her tenure, and I wish her the best," he said.

N'Jie-Konte's firm chose Charles Schwab and Altruist as its custodians, and she regularly posts webinars and interviews through "The Financial Powerhouse" podcast. Like many advisors who began their careers at giant wealth management firms that emphasize primarily high net worth clients, she used the independent RIA structure to create her own business model based on the ability to work outside the industry's traditional customer base with alternatives to the typical fee of 1% of assets under management.

That model "can really leave out a lot of people," N'Jie-Konte said. Her primary group of clients is professional and entrepreneurial women in the age range of 30 to 45 years old. They're high earners, and, "They need somebody to take a lot of financial duties off their plate," but that part is just "table stakes" compared to comprehensive planning and other services she's offering through the firm, she said. For example, N'Jie-Konte will hold monthly virtual meetings with experts on topics such as real estate investing to provide "a real tactical, tangible value-add" in the form of ideas and strategies giving the clients the ability to "walk away with something that could make them potentially millions of dollars," she said.

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She plans to decide this year at some point whether to establish a physical office that could function as a content studio and a gathering place for clients, as well. The RIA will seek to add up to 28 customers it can serve in a "highly profitable, highly scalable, highly streamlined way," through specialty areas such as impact investing and divorce planning rather than treating them as "28 spots to fill," N'Jie-Konte said, noting that she's the mother of three young children and she wants the clients to think of Poder as something more than simply their financial advisor. 

"I wake up every day at an ungodly hour really energized," she said. "'This is my network. This is a place where I get so much more value above somebody managing my portfolio.'"