By Amey Stone

This article is from the free monthly Barron's Advisor Women's Edition newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered directly to your inbox.

Welcome to June. May was a busy month for the Barron's Advisor team with the publication of our Top 250 Private Wealth Teams ranking. We highlighted numerous women, including Hilary Giles of Merrill Lynch's Arbogast Breen Giles Olmo Group , Katie Hancock and Sarah "Dusti" Monk of Morgan Stanley's Warr Group , and Stephanie J. Stiefel of Neuberger Berman's The Stiefel Team .

Now we're working on our next advisor rankings package: Top Women Financial Advisors, which will appear in the July 21 issue of Barron's ( 2024's ranking is here). As we research articles to accompany the ranking, I've been reading every study I can get my hands on about women in the industry.

One publication from Carson Group caught my eye. In its 2025 State of Women in Wealth Management, the firm conducted 17 interviews with experienced women advisors and surveyed more than 150 others to come up with a "road map" for success. There's a lot more detail in the report, but these are the eight key strategies Carson identified:

   -- Deepen client relationships. 
 
   -- Hire strategically and delegate early. 
 
   -- Actively build your support network. 
 
   -- Pursue certifications and commit to lifelong learning. 
 
   -- Design work-life balance with intention. 
 
   -- Build confidence through action. 
 
   -- Use technology to scale with purpose. 
 
   -- Plan for long-term continuity. 

Women on the move:

Patty Sachs joined Citi as head of wealth marketing, reporting to Alex Craddock, chief marketing and content officer. She joins Citi from Publicis -- Mai Park joined LPL's employee advisor channel, Linsco by LPL Financial, from Merrill Lynch. Her new firm, Mai Park Capital, is affiliated with Pence Wealth Management -- Tara Thompson Popernik joins LPL Financial as head of wealth planning. She was most recently senior vice president of the wealth strategies team at Bernstein Private Wealth -- Nellie Keyhani joined Curated Wealth Partners, a multifamily office and investment management firm, as director of client advisory. She was formerly at Iconiq Capital -- Lisa Erickson retired in April as head of the public markets group at U.S. Bank Wealth Management after she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease -- Cameron Rogers joined Angeles Wealth Management as a partner in New York. She was most recently a private wealth advisor at Ellevest -- Legal executive and start-up advisor Michelle Wilson has joined Wealthfront's board of directors. Her career includes serving 13 years as Amazon's general counsel -- Mindy Diamond, who founded wealth management recruiting firm Diamond Consultants, is becoming chairman of the board after naming Louis Diamond the CEO and Jason Diamond the president -- Blackstone Private Wealth hired Jennifer Abate as a senior managing director and the head of the registered investment advisor (RIA) channel. She is based in New York. She was previously a managing director at Lazard Asset Management -- Hightower named Jennifer Krevitt its chief human resources officer. She most recently ran a private consulting business and before that served as chief human resources officer at Invesco -- Nagina Malhan joined Citi Wealth as head of data sourcing and curation. She was previously an executive director at Morgan Stanley -- The Citizens Committee for New York City named Neuberger Berman's Holly Newman Kroft a 2025 New Yorker for New York.

Highlights from our coverage:

Stephanie Guild, senior director of investment strategy and president of Robinhood Asset Management, on how advisors can work with DIY investors:

"The industry sometimes says, just let us manage the money. I don't think advisors should do that. I don't think that's the best way to win over a client; you should serve them the way they want. Customers like to do some things on their own and hand some things over to us. And customers like the complement of having both."

Kaden Bernstein, Morgan Stanley financial advisor, on deciding to be a financial advisor after closing her consignment shop:

"I launched a high-end or luxury consignment store during my senior year in college. I was not a finance major -- biology and Italian were my two majors. The store did fabulously, but like any good business owner, you kind of know when to close your doors. My father had passed away when I was 18, and his Morgan Stanley financial advisor kind of stepped in and helped me understand how this business works. He eventually retired, but the person who inherited his book was also fabulous. I asked about moving into this industry. He thought I'd be fabulous. So I wound up moving forward with that path."

Kara Duckworth, managing director of client experience at Mercer Advisors, on treating women as a "niche" market:

"Women are not a niche -- they are more than half of the population -- but they have some needs that may be different. It's not enough to put your usual marketing information on a pink sheet of paper and say, this is our offering for women. We launched the InvestHERS initiative in 2018 to serve the unique wealth management needs of our female clients, but also to support the career progression and personal progression of our female employees. When we started it, we looked at the different roles that women may play. In many cases they play multiple roles all at once. You may be an entrepreneur, a primary breadwinner, a caregiver for children or aging parents or spouses. You may be getting divorced, you may be a widow. You may be all those things at different times in your life. We work with women and make sure their plan reflects those needs."

Annie Brinckman, wealth advisor and managing partner at Capital Planning Wealth Management, on how playing golf helped her career:

"I grew up golfing. As a young girl I got used to being the only girl on the boys' team. I got to spend time understanding what that looks like, which eventually helped me in my career as an advisor, where oftentimes I was the only female advisor at the table. That's changing now, which is exciting. At Westchester University, I was the captain of the women's golf team. Since then I have barely played. I am a woman of many hobbies though, and the through line is that I love to learn."

Write to Amey Stone at amey.stone@barrons.com

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June 02, 2025 13:51 ET (17:51 GMT)

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