Journal of Financial Planning: January 2020
Alexandria Cole-Davis is the 2020 FPA NexGen president and a host of the “You’re A Financial Planner Now What” podcast. She is a CFP® candidate professional who is passionate about guiding people to better understand their relationship to money. She is a paraplanner at Symphony Financial Planning, where she is instrumental in assisting planners and clients.
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When you need to know more about how to be a successful woman in financial planning, you go straight to one of the profession’s pioneers, René Nourse, CFP®, to see how she did it. Nourse is the founder and managing director of Urban Wealth Management. She’s a guest commentator on CNBC Closing Bell, and she’s the 10th president of the Association of African American Financial Advisors, or Quad-A. She’s also a trailblazer in the profession, advocating for women, people of color, and inclusive leadership.
A Path to Financial Planning
Nourse started out in the insurance industry, working for Mutual of Omaha where she developed a niche offering a special discounted rate for disability [insurance] to government employees. Her manager, who was also African American, took notice and really worked with her to build that niche and her skills. He was one of only three African Americans working at Mutual of Omaha at the time, and he became Nourse’s mentor.
“I was very blessed to have someone who actually had my back; he was my mentor and he also supported me,” Nourse told me in a recent episode of the “You’re a Financial Planner Now What” podcast.
Under his guidance and with her determination, Nourse earned her Series 65. She left Mutual of Omaha to start working for a deferred compensation plan company in Los Angeles County. After her experiences there, she decided she really wanted to become a stockbroker (the term at the time), so she got her Series 7.
During this same time, Nourse took time off to be with her new baby. When she was ready to go back to work, though, nobody wanted to hire her.
“I was turned down by everybody except one firm,” Nourse said. “It could [have been] because of the culture, because I was a woman. This was back in the ’80s. The percentage of women in the industry was very, very low … and then being a person of color, they were like, ‘No, you’re not a good fit.’”
But then she found Dean Witter, a family-owned company she loved. When the firm was acquired by Morgan Stanley, though, she left for Prudential Securities. She stayed there for seven years and then went to Smith Barney. And when Smith Barney was eventually acquired by Morgan Stanley, Nourse said enough was enough: she started Urban Wealth Management.
Supporting Women Through Leadership and Service
Since then, Nourse has been devoted to supporting women—both in the planning profession and the clients her firm serves. Urban Wealth Management employs four female CFP® professionals, including Nourse. With her all-women team, her firm focuses on providing women a safe, supportive space where it’s not just about investments—it’s about their life and their hopes.
At her firm, Nourse also creates a space for female planners entering the profession—and she encourages other planners and firms to do the same. As she explained in our conversation, women can be aggressively recruited in the profession, but once they’re in a firm, they’re often the only woman and offered little support.
“One of the challenges—and I hear this a lot from women—is when they come into the industry or they come into a firm, it’s very sales oriented,” Nourse explained. “That’s difficult for women. We’re great with relationships and developing relationships. And if you’re planning to work with women in particular, we don’t tend to make decisions right away; we’ve got to trust you. That takes a little bit of time to develop that relationship.”
She advises that if you want to attract these new planners, regardless of gender, create a culture that offers the right environment.
“Women, to this day, still are mostly responsible for managing our families,” Nourse said. “Women need to have the flexibility to come and go as they need to manage their family and manage their lives.”
Mentorship and Community
Nourse believes that new planners need a mentor—someone to help them navigate what can be an overwhelming and complicated profession. According to Nourse, mentorship doesn’t have to be a formal affair, like a mastermind group or a paid coach. It can be inside or outside of the planning profession. It can be a group or a single person. But finding someone who can answer your questions, calm your worries, and help hype you up is essential for new planners, experienced professionals, and future leaders.
Because she’s a firm believer in the power of mentorship, she joined the Association of African American Financial Advisors in 2015. Her initial call to join was to stay connected with other women and people of color in the profession.
Over the last four-plus years, Nourse has been very involved in Quad-A—even serving as president— because she wanted to continue the legacy of the organization’s founder, LeCount Davis, CFP®. She’s guiding the launch of Quad-A’s mentorship program, which she believes will connect many professionals—new and veteran alike.
For Nourse, community, leadership, and mentorship lend themselves to finding a niche and doing the best work we can do as financial planning professionals.
How to Find Your Niche
Are you looking for your niche—the thing that makes you a truly unique professional in your space? Nourse’s strategy for finding your niche is to explore the questions: Who are you? What are you passionate about? What is your specialty?
For NexGen planners, one niche could be serving the many younger clients looking for help with student loan debt. These clients need someone who knows all about student loan options, or who can help them manage other debt while paying down student loans. Another example Nourse shared is working with people in the tech field. Identify a specific company you’re familiar with in terms of their services, their products, and their employee benefits, then reach out to its employees.
“Who’s naturally knocking on your door?” Nourse posed. “Cultivate that group and start making sure you narrow your focus in on working with them.”
At the end of the day, serving a specific niche makes you a better planner and potentially a better leader and mentor down the road.
“You really have to start from who are you,” she said. “And I think once you do that internally, it’ll be easier to answer that question about who you want to work with.”
To hear more of René Nourse’s insights into the progress of the profession and how to find your place in all of it, listen to Alexandria Cole-Davis’ interview with her on the “You’re a Financial Planner Now What” podcast.