This week In The Suite is happy to welcome Kate Healy into the guest chair. When I first came to the industry in 2010, Kate was the first woman to give me a seat at the table and make me feel welcome. Her contributions and philanthropic gifts to the industry are epic.
Kate Healy is a woman on a mission to solve the talent crisis confronting the RIA Industry by opening the RIA career path to fresh faces – including new graduates, career changes, military veterans, and other groups that aren’t traditionally represented in the financial advice field. Her advocacy started over two decades ago when she first joined the financial services industry and has picked up speed ever since. She’s non-stop.
Kate Healy is the managing director of Generation Next at TD Ameritrade Institutional. Prior to joining TD, Kate served as VP of IRA Product Strategy at Merrill Lynch. She is a trustee for the Financial Planning Association and a council member for the Women’s Initiative at the CFP Board. Not only was she named to InvestmentNews Women to Watch in 2015, but Investment Advisor put Kate Healy on its annual list of the 25 Most Influential People in the Industry. Not to mention she interviewed Condoleezza Rice. It’s rare to find a person quite like her
Kate believes in paying it forward. Her passion for philanthropy is more than evident through her work offering pro bono financial planning support to families in need. And she really believes that companies should look around internally for talent. “It’s important for us to also look around for that talent and recognize that it may come to us in different forms and it may be in our firm already,” says Kate.
Once you listen to this podcast, you’ll realize Kate’s words are meant to inspire other leaders. Kate wants to give people a fighting chance and she wants them to be able to advocate for themselves in their career. She aims to enable others to not only have a seat at the table but pull out a chair for another woman in the suite. That means you, the person reading this right now. There’s a lot to learn in this episode.
Kate has an eye for thinking outside of the box. After all, her career background in analytics, finances, and budgets allowed her to look at marketing in a different lens. She asked questions like how can we be smarter about the money that we spend? She has the know-how on what it takes to push a brand forward.
We are grateful for your service to the financial services industry and for inspiring us. Kate provided a wealth of knowledge throughout the podcast episode, but to help you really skyrocket your career, take the below three steps after listening to this week’s episode:
- Create a role that fits. You can create a career path that takes you from an operational role into an advisory role, or into the Chief Operating Officer role or another type of ownership role. Take the initiative at your work. Go to your leadership and express the need and how you can help make things run more efficiently. They’ll love it!
- Ask someone you admire about their career. We often don’t ask for help for fear of rejection but most people are willing to help out. Not only that, but it’s also a way for people to give back and they’re usually really flattered and happy to be asked. Ask your bosses, the people you network with, or even a friend. Reach out to them on LinkedIn, and don’t be afraid if they don’t answer right away.
- Feedback is very important. Kate recommends that advisors should reach out to their clients to find out what’s resonating with them. You can find out who’s listening and what resonates with them. How do they want to receive that information? What do they think of your brand? What are the top three things that they tell their friends about you? Start by asking your clients what problem you want to solve for them. It makes the marketing part easier because they’re helping you do the work and playing an active role in the process.
Show Notes
This week In The Suite welcomes Kate Healy into the guest chair. As the managing director of Generation Next at TD Ameritrade Institutional, Kate supports current and future Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) and independent financial advisors. She’s a woman who wants to help others empower themselves in their careers, whether that’s positioning themself for a new position or her philanthropic efforts to offer financial advice to those who can’t access it.
She talks about growing up always knowing she wanted to be involved with money in some way. Kate navigated her way through different careers and found a way to make it to the top while helping others around her succeed too. Kate says people ought to seek out the job that’s going to help you learn the most. When you’re first graduating or starting a career, you don’t always know what that’s going to be, so that’s part of the discovery process.
In our discussion, you’ll discover some of Kate’s best secrets and top strategies to grow a great business, build a strong brand, and lead teams in the 21st century. You’ll enjoy hearing her personal stories of triumph, trepidation, and transformation in hopes of becoming a better leader ourselves.
Join the conversation to hear about:
- How Kate first established her career (7:00)
- What Kate always tells people about dealing with roles and client expectations (12:40)
- The importance of getting thrown into the fire in order to learn (16:20)
- How she used her finance experience as a marketer (19:00)
- Why marketing is important and beneficial to push a brand forward (21:00)
- Interns are the future (26:30)
- How the financial industry has grown over the years (29:00)
- Kate explains TD Ameritrade’s cutting-edge next steps (31:45)
- Being intentional about figuring out your career path (37:30)
- How to create a new role at your current job (43:00)
- Why Kate is so passionate about financial planning support (48:00)
- The one thing Kate wishes she’d known when she first started her career (53:30)
- How mentorship has changed and will change due to COVID (58:20)
- Kate shares what her superpower trait is (64:00)
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