Ballentine Partners was thrilled to participate in the 2021 CFP Board Center for Financial Planning’s Diversity Summit & Career Fair that took place on November 17-19, and to be a Major Sponsor of this powerful event. This annual summit focuses on actionable solutions to advance diversity and inclusion (D&I) in financial planning. This year, the theme of the Summit was Metrics that Matter, highlighting qualitative and quantitative metrics for firms’ workforce and culture by experts and practitioners. Learn more about the Diversity Summit.

Ballentine Partners participated in the Summit in several ways:

  • Financial Education Specialist Akeiva Ellis, MSFP, CPA/PFS, CFP®, ChSNC® was a panelist at the “Financial Planning as A Career” breakout session.  This conversation highlighted the persistent need for different voices to enter and make their mark on the ever-changing financial planning profession. This panel was moderated by Jocelyn Wright, MBA, CFP®, RICP®, Founder & CEO of Ascension Wealth Management. Other panelists included Cait Howerton, MBA, AFC®, CFP®, Lead Planner at Facet Wealth, Marguerita Cheng, CFP®, RICP®, CSRIC®, Chief Executive Officer of Blue Ocean Global Wealth, and Ed Gonzalez, CFA, Senior Vice President at Capital Group.
  • Akeiva was also a panelist at our Ballentine-hosted breakout session, “Building and Bolstering Multigenerational Black Wealth.” This conversation was moderated by Ballentine Partners’ Chief Creative Officer, Coventry Edwards-Pitt, CFA, CFP®, and left the audience with actionable strategies they can implement in their personal and professional lives to advance this critical goal. We also invited Lori Anne Douglas, Esq., Founding Partner at Douglass Rademacher LLP, Wes Thompson, CEO of M Financial, and Robin Washington, Board of Directors member at Alphabet, Inc., Honeywell International, Inc., and Salesforce.com to join us in this panel discussion.
  • Wealth Planning Associate Diana Cheung, MSF shared her experiences as an aspiring financial planner and how attending last year’s Diversity Summit & Career Fair influenced her own career trajectory during her introduction of a “CFP® Pro Talk” session led by Marcus Malonson, CFP®, SVP and Wealth Management Advisor at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
  • Several of our team members attended this year’s Career Fair, speaking with potential job candidates and answering questions about our firm, our culture, and our open positions.

See full Diversity Summit agenda

We were also a Major Sponsor of the CFP Board’s Academic Research Colloquium (ARC), held on November 11-16, 2021. The Academic Research Colloquium is an annual online international gathering of researchers, practitioners, graduate students, and leaders of financial planning practice. Its goal is to share and showcase rigorous, relevant research within financial planning and other disciplines that directly or indirectly relate to the financial planning body of knowledge or financial planning practice.

Learn more about the Academic Research Colloquium.

At the Colloquium, Juan Mejia, MBA, CFP®, CFA, CAIA, our Senior Quantitative Analyst, presented the Ballentine Partners Best Paper Award. The Best Paper Awards recognize outstanding research papers exhibited at the event.