How Barry Simmons of Wells Fargo wins by helping others

"'Go to work with a light in your eyes.'"

Barry Simmons, managing director and northeast divisional president of Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management, still recalls his mother's advice to pursue his passion. And throughout his nearly 30-year career in financial services, in roles that frequently took him across the country and back, he has followed her guidance to great success.

Simmons, 50, started in a bank management development program in 1996 and was regularly bumped up into roles of greater and greater responsibility. In his current position, he leads more than 3,000 financial advisors. What drew him to the industry — what sparked the light in his eyes? Simple, Simmons said: "You're helping people."

"It's sharing the education and the knowledge, without having an expectation of the business that could come with it."

In honor of Black History Month, Simmons discussed with Financial Planning his path to becoming one of the highest ranking Black executives in wealth management, along with the lessons he learned along the way that could benefit the next generation of advisors and industry professionals. Prominent takeaways, as Simmons sees it, include pursuing opportunities when they arise, valuing relationships in a people-driven business and giving back to the community.

"The world of wealth management for the Black community, it's such a great untapped opportunity for people," he said. "We just have to make sure that we're creating more opportunities and more exposure for folks, and that's one of the things that I'm committed to doing."

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From linebacker to finance executive

Today Simmons oversees advisors in branches and independent offices across the northeast, from Ohio up to Maine and down through Virginia. The highlights from his life's reel include playing NCAA Division-1 football, taking jobs in 15 different states and parenting twin 14-year-old boys and a 9-year-old daughter with his wife Cassandra.

But his journey started in New Orleans, where his father, Henry, was the city's first Black finance director. His mother, Glenda, was a longtime elementary and high school teacher who met Henry when they both were attending Grambling State University. As parents, Glenda and Henry instilled values such as discipline and the importance of education in their children.

Barry Simmons

Simmons credited his father with imparting to him and his brother Brian, who's now with JPMorgan Chase, that "you want to continue to grow and learn" no matter what and to be able to talk to anyone in any room, he said. Their father provided "a lot of my inspiration" for going into finance, Barry Simmons added.

"The first thing is, there's no ceiling on your success," Simmons said. "Everyone's got value, everyone's got perspective. Make sure that you always recognize that there's nobody that you're better than, and there's no one that's better than you."

For a time, Simmons was competing with those values in mind as a linebacker on the gridiron.

He played high school football at New Orleans' famed Isidore Newman School, going through the same program as Cooper, Peyton, Eli and Arch Manning. He then played college football as a University of Virginia Cavalier alongside future National Football League stars Ronde and Tiki Barber. But the 1996 UVA grad, who would go on to get an MBA in finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, envisioned his post-collegiate days in a financial career rather than on any athletic field.

His background in sports came in handy when Simmons joined the credit card business in the managerial development program for MBNA, later absorbed into Bank of America. Former athletes often find applicable connections between the fields of finance and sports. For Simmons, something clicked during that training program.

"It started to light a fire around my intellectual curiosity, because I was able to learn all parts of the business," he said. "If you are helping others win and the team is winning, it's better to be part of that type of organization than if you are on a losing team and you're the best person on that team."

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Giving back

"I speak to so many advisors who rave about Barry helping them in their careers," said Sheena Gray, the CEO of the Association of African American Financial Advisors (or Quad-A). "It's not just advisors but senior executives who lean on him for support and advice."

Indeed, Simmons is a well-known figure to fellow Quad-A members and the wider industry. In September, the organization gave him its Spirit of the V.I.S.I.O.N. Award (which stands for "value, impact, success, influence, optimize, now"); past winners include Andy Sieg, then president of Merrill Wealth Management, and Eric Tepper, the CEO of Chase Wealth Management.

As a board member of the Council of Urban Professionals (a talent development and thought leadership network for diverse professionals in Los Angeles and New York) and through his involvement with the mentoring and health- and wealth-building activities of the One Hundred Black Men of New York, Simmons supports various community development initiatives. He also cited Wells Fargo's donations to historically Black colleges and universities, the NAACP and the national 100 Black Men of America.

Wells Fargo promoted Simmons to his current position last year. He joined the firm in June 2023, following tenures with JPMorgan Wealth Management, where he was a managing director and head of the East Division, and Bank of America, where he helped carry out the integration of U.S. Trust and Merrill Lynch.

In leading the Northeast Division at Wells Fargo, Simmons reports to Sol Gindi, who has been head of Wells Fargo Advisors since 2022 and who came to know Simmons when they worked together at JPMorgan, Gindi said in an interview.

In JPMorgan's consumer banking division, he and Simmons collaborated on the launch of the branch-based Chase Private Client wealth management business, Gindi noted. At Wells Fargo, Simmons is making "a lot of inroads" and generating "a lot of success" with a push to give talented professionals from the firm's bank the opportunity to convert into advisors, he said.

"When an opening came up on my leadership team, he was one of the first people I thought to call," Gindi said. "He understands wealth management, he understands consumer banking and he understands client satisfaction because he worked in all those areas previously, and he has a great attitude that he brings with it as well. … He's worked in all different areas of the wealth management business, and he's been able to bring that to the role that he has now."

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Putting the future in the foreground

To build his career, Simmons accepted assignments that took him across the country and back — again and again. By the time Bank of America named him senior vice president in the firm's western region in 2010, he'd been in Los Angeles for a few years, having already moved at least seven times for other roles, according to his LinkedIn page.

And at that point, he already had a larger legacy in mind.

"I want people to remember me as a leader who really cared about his people and who was really invested in their development," he said in a 2013 interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel, a nearly century-old, African American-owned newspaper. "Everyone I touch, I want to make their lives better, financially or otherwise. I want to leave an imprint in business and the communities I serve."

The following year, he migrated back east to serve as the sales director for Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. More cross-country relocations followed.

Those dizzying changes enabled Simmons to "build a tremendous advocacy and support network" in which "I could always pick up the phone and give somebody a call," he said. In addition, his background in various aspects of financial services gave him an edge in the part of the industry that most attracted him — wealth management.

"If you create a silo and you're only learning from the same people, you're narrowing your perspective," Simmons said. "It was so beneficial for me, because every place that I went, I was able to interact with different people, different parts of the country and different demographics."

These days, Simmons has gained a reputation for frequently visiting branches and advisory practices across his region to meet with advisors and clients. Since "the world and career of a financial advisor" are so special, he counsels aspiring advisors to "be intentional about the network and the connections that you're going to make," he said.

"Make sure that you own your own career. Don't wait for someone else to tell you what to do," Simmons said. "If you're only focusing on the job title or the next paycheck, you're being shortsighted."