Women in Wealth

Discussions about diversity and inclusion in the workplace are becoming more and more common and two of Yeske Buie’s own – Elissa Buie and Lauren Stansell – are leading by example to support women in financial planning. Both women recently participated in panel discussions at two separate conferences to talk about ways that Yeske Buie seeks to support a more diverse future for the financial planning profession. In addition to the panel, Lauren also shared her thoughts on attracting and retaining the next generation of planners in an interview featured on Asset TV. See what Lauren had to say about Yeske Buie’s practices via the full transcript below or via the full, five minute video.

• Interviewer: What’s the business case for hiring NexGen advisors or professionals on your staff?
  • Lauren: I think first and foremost it’s passion. We are young and really excited to be in this profession and we are excited to show up as sponges and learn everything we possibly can. And that mentality comes with passion and a willingness to work hard, to do what it takes to get to best serve our Clients, and to do everything we can to constantly be improving. I work with a lot of NexGen planners at Yeske Buie and also in the San Francisco area and around the country, and there’s just an energy that I think we all bring to the table that’s really exciting. I’ve heard it been referred to as refreshing by many of the people I work with!
• Interviewer: Yeske Buie is always on the forefront of diversity and inclusion, can you share more about your experience with that?
  • Lauren: Our focus is on attracting and retaining the best of the best, next generation talent – men and women equally. To support this, we’ve recently done an overhaul of our hiring, training, and onboarding process to make sure we are finding ‘A Players’ who are going to fit really well in our culture and who are passionate about what we do as a firm. We also wanted to make sure that we have a really comprehensive onboarding and training program so those who do come on are up to speed and working on real client work from week two and are giving back and contributing to the firm. This makes the role even more exciting; for someone to be able to come in and say three months in, “I’ve been in ten client meetings, I’ve been taking notes, I did the prep work for this meeting all by myself, etc.”, that’s really powerful.
• Interviewer: What can our industry be doing to attract more women?
  • Lauren: I think a lot of it starts with awareness of the industry itself and the financial planning profession. To support awareness within our firm and with our clients, we do a lot of work with financial literacy for children of our clients so that they can start to learn about financial planning and financial literacy and also so they know we exist. Externally in the community and in the profession, I think as more and more undergraduate and graduate programs with financial planning degrees come about, there will be a lot more awareness about our work which will hopefully help us get more people into the profession.