Quad-A conference urges women advisors to use their voices

When workplace communication consultant and author Minda Harts was 12 years old, she wanted to learn how to ride horses. Her father pointed out that there were no stables near her family’s home and that the hobby would be too expensive. 

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After some initial tears and anger, Harts got an idea, she recalled in a keynote speech at this week’s Association of African American Financial Advisors (Quad-A) Women’s Impact Initiative Network Conference in Chicago. She created a script expressing her goal of receiving instruction in horseback riding and called about 50 different facilities. 

Eventually, she found one where the owner was willing to train her in exchange for doing some work around the stables. And, even though the facility was a long drive away, her dad took her there every week. Harts is still riding horses today, and the anecdote demonstrates one important lesson for many women trying to advance in a male-dominated field like wealth management.

In her former corporate career prior to writing books like “The Memo” and her most recent one, “Talk to Me Nice: The Seven Trust Languages for a Better Workplace,” Harts was often “the only woman of color, the only Black woman, sometimes the only woman, the youngest — all these different intersections —  and so, sometimes, I would silence myself at the expense of my own well-being,” she told the record audience of more than 300 financial advisors and other wealth management professionals. “I realized that I had to go back to a time in my life where I was very boisterous, where I had a lot of confidence, because sometimes the workplace will shake that confidence, have you questioning yourself, even when you know you are that person, even though you know you have the credentials. Sometimes we work with people who make us question ourselves, and so self-trust is so important.”

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The only event of its kind

At the third annual edition of industry’s largest gathering geared toward the professional development of Black women, speakers like Harts emphasized the need for self-advocacy, collaboration and giving back to the next generation of advisors and investors. That could look like arguing for public policies that boost retirement savings, launching a new firm or taking a different approach to a pervasive problem like the industry’s lack of representation.

Just 2% of certified financial planners are Black and less than a quarter are women. While some of the demographic representation numbers have shifted in recent years, the larger political environment has certainly changed discussions about diversity, equity and inclusion in the industry. An audience member asked Harts about how to navigate the pushback to “DEI” today.     

“We understand what the climate is, but we still have our voice,” Harts said. “We are our biggest advocates. We can advocate for each other, and nobody can stop that.”

As an organization celebrating its 25th anniversary since trailblazing planner LeCount Davis started Quad-A, the group remains devoted to its missions of increasing the representation of Black professionals in the field, lobbying lawmakers around policies that affect advisors and “helping students enter into the financial industry,” CEO Sheena Gray said in her opening speech at the conference. 

And the organization has drawn some important support from the industry toward those efforts. The sponsors of this week’s event included JPMorgan Wealth Management, RBC Wealth Management, Wells Fargo Advisors, UBS, Ameriprise, Baird, Invesco, Morgan Stanley, Edward Jones, Cambridge Investment Research and PIMCO. Gray also unveiled the winners of three full scholarships for undergraduate students to study and sit for the CFP examination.

“We really need to increase representation, and that’s why we’re doing things like this, offering scholarships, working more closely with the CFP Board, because I would love for us to host a conference in conjunction with the CFP Board, and the room looks like this, and everybody in the room has their CFP,” Gray said.

In addition, she unveiled two new members of Quad-A’s board: Marie Taylor, a West Hempstead, New York-based financial advisor with Edward Jones, and Libet Anderson, the community engagement leader with Cetera Financial Group’s Cetera Wealth Partners and current chair of the Investments & Wealth Institute.

“We were at our VISION conference in 2025 and someone was very bold, and they stood up and they said, ‘This board looks really nice, but there is no representation on this board. There are no women,'” Gray said. “We heard you, and we did a call out for board members. And I’m happy to report that Quad-A now has two women who have joined our board.” 

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Norvell Tolbert/Five11cinema/Association of African American Financial Advisors

Many valid kinds of advocacy

Such advocacy efforts could involve many different aspects of advisors’ businesses or working together across fields. To Sampurna Khasnabis, a senior equity analyst with impact investment management firm Nia Impact Capital, the flow of capital can act as “a form of policy advocacy,” and “the best way to collaborate is capital allocation.” That framing puts advisors and other investment allocators like pensions and foundations at the center of important decisions.

“Some may say I’m exaggerating, but I do think every dollar that you move in one direction or the other is an indication of the kind of world you want to see,” Khasnabis said. “That’s where I feel the collaboration is the most important, to seek out those people who share your values and share data with them, align your values — and that’s how we compound leverage.”

For Molly McCormack, a managing director of wealth management with insurance, retirement and investing firm TIAA, the inequality of holdings in 401(k) plans or other long-term portfolios acts as a “critical lever” toward advocacy by her and her firm.

“We have a huge, huge gap,” McCormack said. “59 million Americans don’t even have access to a retirement plan, so we’re advocating right now for a universal IRA that the government would help sponsor. We’re advocating for things like auto-enroll and auto-escalation. We’re advocating for employers to make sure that they’re mindful of things like lifetime income.” 

Sometimes, though, advisors can also argue for a different kind of industry through the structure of their businesses. Planner Njideka Obijiaku launched her Los Angeles-based registered investment advisory firm, Shifting the Culture Wealth Partners, about six years ago.

For women in finance trying to figure out where to start in their policy advocacy, they could begin by finding “a good grasp on who you serve or who you want to serve,” she said. “I started at a broker-dealer, and, while it was a great starting point, a great foundation, it was a little restrictive. So I shifted into the RIA world and what that allowed me to do was to define who I wanted to serve without the pressure of any other expectations.” 

The panel discussion signalled why it’s important for women in the industry and their allies to find each other and work together, according to its moderator, Giofenley Presinal, the chief executive assistant at Quad-A.

“I think the main takeaway that we got from this is that we cannot accomplish things in our silos,” Presinal said. “We need to make sure that we spread the wealth.”