Next Generation Planner: June 2021
Miranda Reiter, Ph.D., CFP®
Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University
www.linkedin.com/in/mirandacreiter
When she was growing up, Miranda Reiter, Ph.D., CFP®, had a vivid imagination. She remembers pretending to own a clothing store—operating the cash register and merchandising the imaginary storefront. She had always admired her teachers when she was young, so she also pretended to be a teacher at home.
“I would have my sister and brother be my students. I took gymnastics lessons as a child, so I also thought I wanted to be an Olympic gymnast someday. Then a psychologist or a fashion designer. But then, when I got to high school, reality set in, and I started to connect the dots of what I was good at and what I truly liked.
I realized that I was really good at being a student—I loved school. I was good at foreign languages, and I’m pretty practically minded by nature. So when it came time for me to actually act on what I wanted to be, I decided to go to college to pursue a double major in international business, which allowed me to get a degree in French, as well as in business administration.”
After she graduated from Mississippi State University, she wanted to move to France and
live the French life. But the United States had just gone to war in Iraq, and since France had not been on board with the plan, she didn’t think it was a good idea.
“Shortly before graduating, I got recruited into this amazing, competitive opportunity to work in a management associate program with a regional bank. The idea was to work for the bank for three months at headquarters with an official mentor. After those three months, you get to work in management anywhere within the bank—any geography, any division. It was just really an awesome program. At the time, I was about 22 years old, and my official mentor in this program was the chief officer of wealth management. That’s where I got to learn about financial planning for the first time.”
When it came time for Miranda to select the area in the bank where she wanted to work, she wanted to choose wealth management, but her mentor discouraged her from doing so, to her dismay. Instead, she chose consumer banking and found that it seemed more receptive to people of color in that division.
“Funny enough, I ended up in the same place in a way because as a part of the job of being in branch management, I was required to get my licenses in insurance and investments. Once I got out into the branch, they partnered me with this really awesome financial planner to help me position products to sell to clients and help them with their goals. He had previously been a science teacher, so he was excellent at explaining things to me. That person was a CFP® [professional], and he connected me in such a positive way to financial planning. It was a long way to get around to it, but it was through that experience that I really connected to financial planning.”
The journey to becoming Dr. Miranda Reiter was a culmination of a lot of experiences, she said. After several years of working in banking, Miranda became dissatisfied.
“I felt like I was not able to service my clients and help people, which was always something of interest to me, on my own terms—it was on the bank’s terms. I became dissatisfied, and I started looking for the next step. I was 25 and I was a branch manager with over 12 employees to lead and manage—it was a lot of responsibility. And I didn’t feel like I was making an impact in a way that was true to Miranda.”
Miranda, the self-proclaimed Francophile, decided to pursue that dream of living the French lifestyle. She took an opportunity to work for the Ministry of National Education in France, teaching English to French students and starting her journey into the educational world. When her contract in France was over, she pursued her master’s degree in public administration as a National Urban Fellow from Baruch College, City University of New York. After graduating, Miranda left the United States again, this time embarking on an opportunity in the Ivory Coast in West Africa. There she worked as an international educator, teaching farmers how to increase their communities’ literacy in the French language, so they would have more agency when selling their cocoa and other produce. Miranda counts this experience as one of the most impressionable and significant in her life. Upon returning from Africa, she got a job as an international project manager and educator at a community college in Florida.
“I was able to advise international students on their careers, develop programming for students, teach classes on cultural competency in the United States and all these different things. But I started to miss finance, and I began thinking that I really wanted to marry these two things—education and finance. That’s when I decided to start studying for my CFP® [certification]. After passing the exam, I started my financial planning firm, then brought my practice to a larger, national firm where I worked as a solo adviser. Then I started having questions—research questions—around what’s going on in the industry and why there isn’t a lot of diversity. One employee told me that in his 25 years working for the company, I was the first black financial adviser he ever saw working in the branch at headquarters of this large financial planning firm. Many of my questions were around diversity and culture and the way that I felt in the corporate environment as a financial planner, and about financial behavior in general.”
She was curious about why clients behaved in certain ways. She also had ideas on these topics from her banking days. It became clear to her that to answer these questions that she had developed over the years, she had to pursue a Ph.D.
“I wanted to teach. I wanted to answer these research questions, and the Ph.D. was really the perfect nexus for all of that.”
Getting a Ph.D. was a long process, and the balancing act between work and school was difficult.
“I was always a working student while pursuing that Ph.D. I was a financial planner in the day, and at night—and at times before work—I was a Ph.D. student.”
Feeling lonely in the program added to the challenge.
“I didn’t necessarily know the ropes of certain things that you should or should not be doing as a doctoral student when I first started in the program.”
But she made it through the rigorous program at Kansas State University and officially became “doctor” in 2020. She now serves as a tenure-track assistant professor at Texas Tech University, where she teaches and produces research.
“I’m currently teaching wealth management to both undergraduate and graduate
students, which includes master’s students and Ph.D. students. What I love most about my work is the freedom I have to conduct the research that I am interested in. That, to me, is just awesome. Part of the reason that’s exciting for me is because I think that in a profession, the research informs an industry. Ultimately, I like to think that research helps little by little to move our profession forward—particularly in financial planning because it’s a practice-based industry. I’m not studying something where you can’t just take it and apply it. My research is applicable, so that’s really fascinating to me.”
Her research interests are focused on answering questions around diversity, equity, and inclusion in the financial planning industry.
“I also look at consumer financial behavior with the lens on race and gender. This work in these areas is very important to me because there’s just so much to explore and there is a lot in financial planning that we don’t necessarily know; we’re still learning, we’re still uncovering. From the research side, my most recent research publication is called ‘Efforts in Diversity in Recruiting and Financial Planning Undergraduate Programs.’ In that paper, I’m looking at how undergraduate CFP Board programs recruit their students, if they are focusing on diversity efforts, and what they’re doing around diversity. I’m also working on publishing papers from my dissertation, which looked at the racial and gender preferences that consumers have when they are hiring financial planners.”
Many people reach out to Miranda to ask her advice when they are considering Ph.D. programs. To them, she says:
“The Ph.D. can serve a great purpose for someone who is interested in research, particularly because a Ph.D. teaches you how to become a researcher, ultimately. I think that if you’re not interested in that, it may not be the best path. The greatest misconception about a Ph.D. is that it’s the final step in education—you get a bachelor’s, you get a master’s, and you get a Ph.D. But a Ph.D. is such a different degree. The Ph.D. will not teach you, in my opinion, how to necessarily be a better financial planner—there are a lot of certifications and master’s programs that can do that. What the Ph.D. will do is help you to become a researcher and help you to think about solid research questions and conduct that research. So again, I think it’s excellent if you have a passion for research or want to become a professor and teach.”
Her final words of wisdom are that you do not have to see your path in the profession as a straight line.
“My path to where I am now was not straight. I started out my life thinking that I was on a straight and narrow path and everybody should know what they want to do and what they want to be and go towards that. But sometimes it’s not like that. It doesn’t necessarily work out that way for everyone, and that’s OK. I had a very curvy path to where I am now, but that curvy path gave me all of these different experiences that enabled me to come full circle and see where I really wanted to be. It made me who I am. I would encourage people who think they’re on some path that’s totally different from where they really want to be to pursue their dreams. Ultimately, you don’t have to have a straight path to find success and happiness, and there is so much to be gained from having a variety of experiences. Enjoy the journey!”