Empowering Female Advisors and Building Inclusive Firms with Lena Nebel

Lena, welcome to Diary of a Financial Advisor and Don't Retire graduate.

Thank you. Thank you for the invite.

I love having you in the hot seat. I do. Because, first of all, we've known each other 25, way too long, 25 years, plus or minus. And I've always been a giant fan of you, of your work, of your work ethic, of everything you stand for. And I'm so glad that you joined us eight years ago. Talk a little bit about your. The beginning of your career, how you decided to do this for a living, and then a little bit about what eventually brought you to our shores.

Sure. How much time do we have this.

This show? We're going to keep this under four hours.

Okay, Got it. So when I was in elementary school, well, I mean, all joking aside, when. When I was younger, I went to my mom's work quite often, and she worked in an administrative position for. For the county with about 30 other women in one big room where they did secretarial work. And so I loved going with her and everything and chatting with all the ladies. And over time, what I realized was that I wanted to be in the corporate arena, but not as a secretary. I wanted to do something more in that leadership and that mentorship and basically be a boss one day. I didn't know what that looked like.

I didn't know what industry that was. But over time, when I look back, I realized that money was always an issue in our house. You know, my. My parents struggled quite a bit. They fought quite a bit over money. And it wasn't until my grandmother had passed away when my parents actually came into some money. And when they came into that money, they Actually didn't know what to do with it. And like many individuals, they did not have an advisor.

They spent more than they probably should have and didn't, didn't save enough. So as I was going through college, I loved all areas of business. I loved the marketing, the management, econ and finance. And over time I started graduating, you know, moving towards the stocks, the investing side, the personal finance. And I helped to create the first investment committee for York College, which I'm extremely proud of. And through that we visited the New York Stock Exchange, we went to hedge fund companies and everything. And what was very apparent to me was the lack of female representation in the industry. When I look back at some of the pictures we took during that time, I was the only female within the committee.

So I knew that that was something that I wanted to change over time. And I wasn't sure how, but I kept gravitating towards the personal finance side, the investments. And so upon graduation, I got my certified Financial Planning designation. I received, you know, my licenses, everything that I needed to start my career. And you know, 15 plus years later, after starting that career, I eventually came to where my home is now at the fga, which has been a fantastic journey.

So one of my colleagues, Claudia Glover and I have spent a lot of time in talking to young women at schools about the career paths that are ahead of them. And I think one of the misconceptions that a lot of individuals have is the only path in our industry is to be a financial advisor, which you don't have to be. So I like to talk to a lot of individuals about looking at our firm in all the different ways in which you can support the industry without actually being an advisor. Because we need the individuals who coordinate, whether it's our client relations department, our marketing operations, the research side, et cetera. There's so much more that goes into it besides just being in front of the client. So when individuals are starting to look at all the different areas, I think it's important, important to make sure that they're looking at firms that have diversity amongst different positions, not just the financial advisor side, but more importantly, start shadowing those individuals. See, is this what I really want? And what does that job entail? I wish I had those opportunities growing up to be able to kind of take for a test run. You know, internships are important, but doing a day of shadowing is very common.

We host those days often here for young adults so that they can get an idea of different areas. And I think we run a really good agenda on making sure that people get all aspects of the investment committee, the advisory department, and kind of see, you know, what all goes into a wealth management firm.

So one of the things that I have always prided myself on and have prided, I think our team has prided themselves on is partly our diversity, but not just diversity for its own sake, but finding amazing people who are all different and coming together for a common purpose. But that's also true at the committee level, at the team lead and leadership level, at the management level, at the advisor level. So it's not just to check a box and move on. There is absolutely none of that happening. How would you classify, if you had to, how would you classify the, the decision making within our organization as a, as a team, as a group?

I mean, the, the first word that instantly comes to mind is collaboration. I think that all of us do a great job on going to individuals who may know more than us and getting their input and their ideas and fleshing out the opinions. And, and you and I are not in the weeds as much as the rest of our team. And so while we may come up with some ideas and strategies, I always like asking the team leads, the committee members, hey, this is what we think we're going to implement. Do you see any, any issues with this? And, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But I think that's the part of the, the communication that we have here, which is great. And not a lot of firms, not a lot of industries really pull from their team and to gather their input. And I think that's one of the unique aspects of how we run this business is we care about how the decisions are going to impact the overall team.

Because we want to keep the culture great. We want to be able to continue to offer the service that we have for clients. And so I think of collaboration, you know, we have some healthy dialogue, some constructive dialogues that go on in the organization. And it's not just the team leads or the shareholders that we're asking, the opinions of, where we're asking everybody. And actually our intern that we have this year, he's been amazing on, you know, kind of coming up with a fresh new set of eyes. I definitely feel like I am now old school with technology, with him bringing his young ideas. So I know how you feel a little bit now sometimes.

Yeah. Welcome. Welcome to the. Welcome to the Geriatric Financial Advisory Club. So Lena, you mentioned, you mentioned collaboration. I think that's a really. That's an important word. And one of the ways in which I think collaboration is important for any professional, and it's true in our industry, to be sure, is to have various stakeholder groups.

So one of them is an advisory board. You know, we've had an advisory board now 17 years, and it's been incredibly helpful in making good decisions. There's information on our website, our, our board members are volunteers. It's interest. Terrific. There's also study groups. Now, study groups in our industry is basically having a half a dozen plus or minus folks in similar roles at different organizations come together to learn from each other. And what I found that I was mind numbed by this whole thing is that there wasn't one in a room that was mostly male.

There was not a study group for women in this industry that I was aware of, nor was there any real push to create one. And so now we have two. You and Claudia, you mentioned her before, are both in study groups. You're in a study group with some amazing coos. Not all women, but amazing coos, and with representation. Claudia is in what's being referred to as the G2 Women Study Group. G2 being second generation, meaning not the founders of a firm, but the future of a firm. And all women who have now come together to share ideas, share experiences, and they're learning from each other.

Where do you see the future of this industry? Where's this industry in 10 years? Will we have dented this disparity or is it a longer slog than that, do you think?

You know, I would hope within 10 years that we have made an impact. I mean, I've been in this industry pushing 25 years and we still have a lot of challenges. You know, as you mentioned, we. The G2 Women's Study Group was recently created, you know, close to two years ago, thanks to your initiative and drive as a male advocate to be able to create this, which is important. You know, we can talk about female representation in the industry, but quite honestly, we also need more male advocates to kind of help push some of these things along. And I think until we have more of that representation, I don't know if we're going to have significant changes. And, you know, most recently, I was at one of our conferences, and we had brought two individuals from our office who also don't look like you and I. Okay.

And having two African American males that come to the conference, I chatted with them about, people are going to look at you. People are going to assume that you don't belong here. And I know what that feels like. And I've been there, and I was able to see what they were going through because I had been in those moments and everything, and I don't feel that way anymore. Which is the difference. I am not alone anymore. I don't count how many women are at the conference like I used to. So I think that has changed.

And I think the more and more we start seeing diversity in not just conferences, but you go to a website for a financial advisory firm, and they do all look like you, Eric. And so they're all handsome, all of them. So I think until more firms can find some diversity to be able to help with meeting clients where they are, we're not going to have that change. And I. And I mean diversity amongst experience, education, everything, not just what we look like.

Well, we are running out of time. And I'm not. I'm not letting you off this show without asking you the question that I ask everyone who's on the Don't Retire Graduate podcast, which is, what do you want to be when you grow up?

What do I want to be when I grow up? I think I'm still trying to figure that out, quite honestly. You know, we talked briefly about how I joined this firm, and quite honestly, I joined this firm to be an advisor. And my title is far from an advisor. And sometimes I think I just want to go back to that role. But I love what I do way too much. I'm having too much fun doing this. So I think what I want to be when I grow up is I want to be Eric Broitman one day.

Oh, boy. I'm speechless. First of all, I'm speechless. Second of all, that's there's a lot of significant work that has to happen here, but nonetheless, Lena, thank you. Thank you for coming on the Diary. I I these are such fun for me because I get a chance to sort of go under the hood a little bit with everybody here and, and hear stories and hopefully your story resonated with, with particularly young women. But frankly, any financial advisor who's looking to further their career, and I appreciate being referred to as a male advocate. That's a role I take pretty seriously, actually, in this industry.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you.

I'd like to thank everyone for listening and watching today. If you enjoy our show, please subscribe so we can continue to be a part of your journey to financial freedom. We'll be back next week with another engaging guest and in two weeks with another entry in our diary of a financial advisor. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you don't retire. Graduate.

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