My Story

In part, I can thank my grandmother. When I was a teenager, she presented envelopes to me, my siblings and cousins. Each envelope contained a stock certificate from her AT&T shares splitting into the Baby Bells. My envelope was for US West, and I tracked end-of-day prices and reinvested dividends on a green ledger pad. To this day I love to see clients come in with their own tracking forms, ledgers or Excel spreadsheets.

After leaving my first financial job, with Charles Schwab & Co., in my late 20s, I spent many years honing my skills with organizations such as Cal Fed, City National Bank and Great Western Financial Services. However, as a bank branch manager with extensive investment background, I was pressured to sell to my clients in order to help my team exceed their branch goals. Can you imagine my frustrations when one inner-city branch manager hit her annual goal on a single business client and I was asked why I couldn’t do the same with our more affluent Manhattan Beach clientele? Rather than violate our clients’ trust, I resigned. I’ve been in the fee-only fiduciary world since I opened my own independent advisory firm in 2002 and would never conduct business any other way.

How I’m expanding what’s possible with money

My husband and I are “right-sized” empty nesters who’ve sold our home in Los Angeles and moved to Sonoma County, where we’re slowly adding personal touches to our new home. This includes replacing the kids with dogs and attempting major landscaping to adapt to our new backyard.

We’re at fortunate phase of life and proactively use our Donor Advised Fund to make charitable grants. We especially enjoy finding organizations doing impactful, meaningful work and try to directly support specific projects.

I’m a member of my local Impact100 Redwood Circle. Combined with the other women of the group, I contribute $1,000 annually to build grants in excess of $100,000 that support specific new projects for local nonprofit organizations.

Outside of work, my passions include

Exploring our new community! Whenever I can, you’ll find me checking out local parks and meandering along local hiking trails. I’m mesmerized by the serene greenery and woods of Sonoma County. I’ve tried mushroom foraging a few times but my Willie Wonka moment came during a tour of the indoor, bottle-grown MyCopia specialty mushrooms. Most Fridays at 12:30 PM, you’ll find my husband picking up our 3 lb bags to share with my colleagues and friends.

I’m committed to picking up my golf clubs again this year and promise to start a women’s 3 par golfing group (to find an engaging, friendly way for women to learn the game from newbies and experienced players).

I’m learning to garden and trying to grow our own vegetables. If you think you know me well enough, ask me about my vertical cantaloupes and how this lady found there are more ways than pantyhose to support the melons!