Women Rocking Wall Street - A Podcast Dedicated To Women In Financial Services

A prolific doer and thinker who’s passionate about moving the needle for financial advisors. Michael is a Partner and Director of Wealth Management for Pinnacle Advisory Group, a private wealth management firm. He’s the co-founder of XY Planning Network which is dedicated to helping Gen X and Gen Y advisors serve their Gen X and Gen Y client peers with a fee-only monthly retainer financial planning model. It’s designed to be a turnkey financial planning platform where they champion financial planning for a younger demographic. XY Planning Network has grown rapidly, coming up on their five year anniversary with over 850 advisors. Michael is also the publisher of The Kitces Report & Nerd’s Eye View. He’s a partner at New Planning Recruiting and the Treasure of the Board of Directors of Washington Improv Theatre. Michael’s a public speaker on financial planning and practice management topics, as well as the host of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. Michael got into financial services when he was graduat

Although she’s a financial planner, she’s not your typical financial planner. Charlene never dreamed of working in this industry. In fact, she never imagined she’d land in the world of investments and long-term planning. Charlene considers herself an artist destined to a life of sales. Starting at age 16, she’s been in commission retail. In fact, she started her career as a sales manager at a lingerie boutique. This is where she discovered the powerful link between money and emotion, passion and vulnerability. From a real-estate agent to making a Fox News parody television show and selling home theatre equipment to selling cars, she’s done it all. Charlene has now been a Financial Advisor with Northwestern Mutual for seven years. She’s a first-generation American whose Portuguese parents taught her about the value of hard work and planning at a young age. She graduated early from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Consumer and Social Psychology. Charlene’s bread and butter is that she works

On this episode, we’re talking about research with Lori Mackenzie. Lori is the Executive Director of Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research as well as the Co-Founder of the new Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. She advises diversity and inclusion efforts at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and teaches executive education. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, BBC, and San Francisco Chronicle. In fact, she was one of the 100 women who was interviewed for the 2018 documentary bias. Lori holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Her main focus of work is at the Clayman Institute which was founded to produce research that motivates gender equality. In her interview, Lori touches on the Paradox of Meritocracy, which is how we as individual managers opened the doors to be more bias. The Paradox of Meritocracy has created the conversation about how to debug mer

Episode 69: It’s Not the End of the Road Guest: Rachel Carpenter On this episode, we have the founder and CEO of Intrinio, Rachel Carpenter. Intrinio is a disruptive, self-serve financial data marketplace launched in 2015 for investors, entrepreneurs, developers, and students. Their data feeds power spreadsheets, quant models, fintech apps, website, and enterprise applications. Rachel’s responsibility includes strategy and positioning for Intrinio’s long-term growth. Rachel graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BA in Finance and Management. Rachel founded Intrinio with Joey French, another graduate from the University of Wisconsin when they sparked an idea for a valuation service industry app they wanted to create. Many iterations later, Intrinio was designed. When fundraising, Rachel emphasizes the importance of telling a compelling story, a compelling problem, and delivering a passionate message instead of just preparing your financial plan, pitch deck, and other materials. Rachel believes that

Episode 68: Hustle and Hard Work  Guest: Winnie Sun Women Rocking Wall Street is back and better than ever! Our first guest is a woman who’s done it all. A hustler who has reinvented herself time after time. Winnie Sun started her career in Hollywood, owning a television audience production company that brought in audiences for shows like “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, and “Wheel of Fortune”. This was her first successful business. Despite its success, Winnie’s Chinese immigrant parents didn’t delight in her chosen profession. Winnie decided to take night classes at UCLA, getting her certificate in financial planning. Shortly after, she received an offer from Smith Barney. That’s when everything changed. While cold calling at Smith Barney, Winnie sought out a more strategic way to solicit new business. She stayed after hours and made her cold calls while all her colleagues went home. She left voicemails, getting callbacks from individuals who actually wanted to talk to her. A few firms and years later, Win

Episode 67: Being A Modernist in Finance Guest: Georgia Lee Hussey With training in instillation sculpture and creative writing, Georgia Lee Hussey was focused on becoming a professional artist. However, after 12 years, Georgia decided it was time to try something new. At the time she was living in Portland, Oregon during the sub-prime mortgages phase and Georgia found herself with two mortgages: the first had a 7.5% interest rate and the second had 11.5% interest, and both were variable. She had never been taught about money or budgeting and found herself in a difficult, unstable position. Georgia began reading everything she could about financing and budgeting and found that she loved it. She became inspired to become a financial planner and went back to school to get her CFP. By the time Georgia successfully passed her CFP exam, she already had some clients, which meant that she needed a home for her business. She looked to a brokerage firm to help and was extremely grateful for all the support that they p

Episode 66: Slowing Down to Speed Things Up Guest: Laura Moore Welcome back to the Women Rocking Wall Street Show! This week’s show is all about how slowing down can actually help you speed things up. Laura Moore has a very interesting business story. Having moved to Australia from the UK several years ago, she fell into the health and wellness industry. Starting as a personal trainer she found that she loved it and therefore threw herself into her work. With several years under her belt, Laura started her own gym, which became her pride and joy. Eight months into the business, and just as it was starting to become profitable, Laura received a call that changed everything. Unfortunately her gym had caught fire and she was faced with a whole host of challenges. She was able to relocate her gym to another location but at that point she had come to the realization that it wasn’t working for her anymore. She also found some changes were happening with her body that put her on a new journey. Eventually she came to

Episode 65: Changing Your Filter Guest: Andrea Leda Wilborn This week’s guest on the Women Rocking Wall Street Show is Andrea Leda Wilborn. She is a coach, intuitive and behind-the-scene’s worker in Portland, Oregon. Andrea began her journey through social work and counselling, and eventually moved to creative arts, consulting, and fitness. Today, she has taken her experiences in all fields and turned them into a business, helping entrepreneurs offer their gifts to the world in real and powerful ways. One area of expertise for Andrea is Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), which refers to how one can speak to the brain and how we can use language to shift how we store data. There is no way that our brain can process all the information that we encounter on a daily bases. By using our central nervous system (5 senses), our brain reads our environment. We also use our stories and experiences to filter information, determining what we see and what we don't. Andrea works with clients to help ensure they have the ri

Episode 64: Finding Energy to Recharge Your Battery Guest: Debbie Pokornik Welcome back to the Women Rocking Wall Street Show. This week’s show is all about reconnecting with our feminine energy and to empower ourselves to live a vibrant and powerful life. My guest this week is Debbie Pokornik, a women of many talents. She is a mother, natural health nut, dedicated dog owner, award-winning author and a passionate social worker. Debbie is also the Chief Empowerment Officer for her company Empowering NRG, which helps proactive moms create the vibrant and powerful life that they crave by guiding them to stand in their own power while at home, work or at play. Debbie’s began her career working for school districts and helping them create programs for kids, parents, teachers and the community, with the purpose of bringing out the best in everyone. Debbie left in 2010 to write her first book, Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Embrace Your Natural Guidance and from there she wrote another book, Standing in Your P

Episode 63: Battling Inequality Through Words Guest: Kelly Shikany Welcome back to the Women Rocking Wall Street Show! This week’s guest was spurred to contact me when she heard the Women Rocking Wall Street episode where I had the pleasure of interviewing Kathleen Burns Kingsbury about embracing being a female and not being afraid to ‘ski like a girl.’ As someone who has held different positions in the financial industry, Kelly Shikany is familiar with being the only female at the table and is now working to change public perceptions around women and finance. Kelly’s first experience with gender inequality occurred while she was working at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Although she loved her job (in the late 80’s) it was not a female friendly workplace. Treated differently by colleagues as well as clients (some weren’t even interested in hearing a women’s voice), Kelly accepted both at the time because of the experience she was gaining. Kelly was aware what was going to happen and accepted it because she

Episode 62: Financial Freedom Through Intention Guest: Julia Carlson Welcome back to the Women Rocking Wall Street Show. This week’s episode is all about the power of intention and setting your mind to achieving your goals. My guest this week is Julia Carlson, founder of Financial Freedom Wealth Management. She was one of the 40 Under 40 in InvestmentNews and won the 2015 Women’s Choice Award for Financial Advisors. In 2000, Julia started her company in Newport, Oregon and has now grown her business to include 4 locations. Fortunately for Julie, in 2008, Financial Freedom was endorsed as a local provider, which brought in 20 to 30 referrals per month. Julia is an extremely entrepreneurial person and she has always been a go-getter. Here she was in her 20’s trying to build her business. Like all of us at that age, she had to work hard to prove herself and now she has the established confidence that is driving her dream big. Her drive comes from her passion for her work and attributes some of her success to th

Episode 61 – Surviving the Overwired World With Sheri Fitts Happy summer! As you may know, with the summer season comes a lot of activities that fill up the calendar. I’m finding the same this year so as a result I’m going to be releasing an episode of Women Rocking Wall Street every other week. My intention is to kick off a new podcast, Deconstructing Digital, which is a companion piece to my new book, Deconstructing Digital: Simple Ways To Connect With Your Next-Generation Financial Clients. This week’s episode of Women Rocking Wall Street is another interview where the microphone is turned around (metaphorically speaking) and I am the one being asked questions by Kristin Mountain, co-founder of Podcast SMARTER. This episode is all about surviving the overwired world. There are so many dif fervent distractions that we can choose from that affect our decisions on how we should be spending our time. As a result, we tend to run into digital overload, all because we don't want to miss out on anything. This dil

Episode 60 – Your Brand, Your Business, Your Bottom Line With Sheri Fitts This week’s episode is slightly different than what you may be used to. I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Fiduciary Talk Podcast with Ben Aiken, which was recorded live from the Insights 2016 Conference in San Diego. The topic of my presentation was titled Your Brand, Your Business, Your Bottom Line and really focused on creating a compelling, courageous brand. With financial services in a PR tailspin, it’s extremely important that financial advisors maintain a strong brand. People have stories about their money, good or bad, and that includes financial services. The best way to combat their story is with a better one. Unfortunately, advisor brands are not powered by stories. At this conference I had the opportunity to guide attendees on create courageous brands, and to do this using feelings and stories to connect with their current and potential clients. I encouraged everyone at the conference, as well as yourself, to sit dow

Episode 59: Influencing The Masses Guest: Teresa de Grosbois Listen via iTunes Listen via Stitcher Radio Teresa de Grosbois is a mass influencer, international speaker, author and leader the Evolutionary Business Council, an international organization of thought leaders. This is a collaborative entity of people who are committed to creating positive change in the world. As mentioned earlier, Teresa is an influencer, and teaches the skill of mass influencing to others. Many don't realize that influence is a skill that can be learned and that there are many different levels of influence. Initially, Teresa worked in the Canadian oil and gas sector, which was male dominant. She was fortunate to have a lot of great mentors and was a change agent from the very beginning. Teresa was leading a lot of change initiatives in the industry and found it difficult until a mentor provided her with insight into influencing. He gave her an analogy of pushing a rope in the middle, and the ends would follow rather than trying to

Episode 58: Financial Power Guest: Rosemary Frank I have been looking forward to speaking with this week’s guest of the Women Rocking Wall Street Show. Rosemary Frank, Financial Advisor, had a 30-year career in the corporate sector. She was always deeply immersed in financial issues and eventually decided that she wanted to transition to a personal approach, specifically personal finance. When she began transitioning, she realized that she had a lot to learn. She studied and worked her way up to where she is today. Throughout her entire career, Rosemary found that it was a lonely road, mainly because she was a woman.  As a result, when she started her practice, she spent a lot of time listening, sympathizing and educating her clients, rather than just telling them what she thought they should do. As a result, she has a successful practice that has a majority of female clients. Also, through her processing of listening, she was led into the specialization of divorce finances. When she started her divorce work,

Episode 57: Women in Securities Law Guest: Linda Riefberg My guest this week was recently acknowledged as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Securities Law. Linda Riefberg started out as a general commercial litigator in a large Wall Street firm where she was an associate working part time with two young children. When asked to increase her hours to full time, Linda decided it was time for a change. While job searching, she stumbled upon a position at the New York Stock Exchange and immediately loved the subject matter as well as the work environment. Collaboration and team work fit well with Linda, in addition to her ability to specialize in one particular business sector of the stock market. After working in that position for 18 years, Linda decided to venture into private practice. She is now a member of the Cozen O’Connor’s Commercial Litigation department, where she represents clients in securities enforcement investigations. Throughout Linda's career, she has seen that the business side of the fin

Episode 56: Thriving in Business Guest: Martine Lellis Happy May! I have been enjoying the outdoors recently since the weather has been so gorgeous and I hope you’ve had the opportunity to do the same. My guest this week is Martine Lellis has a passion for learning. She grew up in a small town in South Carolina and was fortunate to gain admissions into Duke University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Upon graduation, Martine began working within the IT industry building systems for banks and insurance companies. While this was her first exposure to the financial industry, her real awakening came when she realized a gap in knowledge within general concepts around money that occur in primary as well as post-secondary schooling. When she looked at the gap in her knowledge and paired it with what drove her, she found a match in financial planning. For the past 14 years, Martine has been Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney (SBSB) where she has worked her way up to Chief Operating Officer. C

Episode 55: Business Is in Her Blood Guest: Miriam Diwan Miriam Diwan’s family has always been in business or finance, so you could say it runs in her blood. She attended the University of Pennsylvania to obtain her undergraduate and found that she had varied interests. She graduated with a dual degree in liberal arts and finance. From there, she began investment banking and eventually moved into hedge funds. With her first position, at a private equity firm, she was one of the first three women that were hired in a 10-year history. When her mother fell ill, Miriam ended up being the primary caregiver. Trying to manage her career and supporting her mom, she found that it was becoming too much for her to handle. Miriam made the decision to put her career on hold and eventually moved to L.A for her mother to receive the best medical care available. Through this process, Miriam and her mother had to move to several different states and experienced the difficulties in finding a neighbourhood that met all their ne

Episode 54: Finessing Financial EducationGuest: Liz Davidson I’ve had the pleasure of meeting this week’s guest in 2003 and have been an admirer ever since. Liz Davidson is the Founder and CEO of Financial Finesse, the leading provider of workplace financial wellness programs for companies as an employee benefit. Companies, through Financial Finesse, are able to provide their employees with free financial advice and help them get to where they want to be financially without the pressure of sales. Liz began her career in financial services, specifically in investment banking, and eventually realized that her work life balance was not something that she could maintain. Wanting to embrace her entrepreneurial spirit, Liz began attending the University of Los Angeles to obtain her business degree. Her first venture after graduating was a hedge fund but in the process, she began to see that her investors didn’t have the basic fundamental understanding on how to appropriately invest their money. Seeing that her clie

Episode 53: Winning in SalesGuest: Carmela Elco This week’s guest came to my attention from a recent list from the National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA) identifying the top women advisors in the country for 401K or retirement savings. Carmela Elco is the Managing Director and Senior ERISA Consultant with Blue Prairie Group. Originally from a human resources background, Carmela graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and holds an M.A. in Human Resources Management from St. Francis University. Working with retirement plans and 401Ks, Carmela found that she really enjoyed it over other areas of human resources. She transitioned from working in a human resources capacity into a consultant position fairly holistically and has been providing great work for her clients ever since. Carmela is very collaborative and she has a passion for her work. That combined with her dedication to her clients and the industry has helped her stand out as one of the top female advisors of 2015. Securing the sale of a 401K