Cary Carbonaro wins lifetime honor at Women to Watch: 'I am so not done'

Cary Carbonaro accepted a lifetime achievement award Thursday night with one caveat: She isn’t finished.

“It feels incredible, but I am so not done,” said Carbonaro, managing wealth advisor and Women and Wealth Ambassador at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth.

Carbonaro received The Alexandra Armstrong Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Financial Services Industry at the seventh annual InvestmentNews Women to Watch Awards, held Nov. 5 at 583 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Earlier that day, InvestmentNews hosted its Women Advisor Summit.

“I’m madly passionate about this industry and helping women and changing this industry for women and making it more female friendly, and that is my life’s work,” she said. In September, Carbonaro funded a CFP Board scholarship for women career changers with a $125,000 gift. She said her next steps include more books and training more advisors to work with women.

“We just have to see it to be it, and we have to hold ourselves out that this is an incredible profession for women. And a lot of women don’t even know this. They don’t even know it exists,” Carbonaro said.

Other winners included Cheryl Nash of InvestCloud, Executive Excellence Award; Hannah Moore of Amplified Planning and Guiding Wealth, Female Trailblazer of the Year; Charlotte Young of Wealth.com, WealthTech & Innovation Leader of the Year; and Lizbeth Menjivar of Fidelity Investments, Rising Star Advisor of the Year.

Orion was named Employer of Choice. Marti Marache of Harbor Asset Private Wealth won Portfolio Manager of the Year, Sarah Williams of CreativeOne was named Allyship Champion of the Year, and Cristina Wiebelt-Smith of Gertsema Wealth Advisors was named Financial Literacy Champion. Elizabeth Shabaker of Versant Capital Management won Independent RIA Leader of the Year (Female-Led).

Mercer Advisors’ San Francisco Bay Area team won The Prudential Wealth Advisors Award for Fastest Growing, Female Led Advisory Team. Melissa Partridge of Loomis, Sayles & Company received The Thrivent Award for Excellence in Philanthropy and Community Service.

Building the pipeline

Several honorees said the industry’s next challenge is making room for women once they arrive. Menjivar, a financial consultant at Fidelity, is president of the Financial Planning Association of Illinois, where she said the board saw a gap.

“We as a board realized there wasn’t a lot of women in this field or a safe place for us to hang out. So about two years ago, we spearheaded a women’s subdivision of FPA, and so we’ve been able to grow that,” Menjivar said. “When I started, maybe there was three of us. Now there’s about six, seven of us on the board.”

The group has since started a group chat and hosted a women-only golf event, she said.

Others pointed to building the pipeline. In October, Schwab unveiled plans for a National RIA Day on college campuses. The event is set for Feb. 17, 2027, in partnership with the CFP Board, and is intended to get students familiar with the independent financial advisor career path.

Wiebelt-Smith, whose St. Joseph, Mo., firm has 12 people, said recruiting women advisors has been difficult.

“I’ve been trying to get a female financial advisor into our office, and honestly, women don’t apply a lot,” she said. “I think one of the keys is for them to understand that it’s not just a sales business; it is truly just about helping people, serving families. And I think when they see that, they’ll realize that they’re probably a natural fit.”

Annie Gottbehuet, who accepted Mercer’s award with colleague Jojo Cresci, said mentorship shaped her career. “I’ve been the only woman in a lot of rooms, and I had men in those rooms that invested in me and believed in me,” she said. She credited the firm’s Women & Wealth unit, relaunched this spring, with supporting both female employees and clients.

AI to get over the hump

Williams said women have come a long way but still trail on credentials in the advisor industry.

“Statistics still show that we are behind, and we are only coming up with minimal percentages in the industry of being a CFP – there’s only about 24% of women that are CFPs. We’ve got to get over that hump,” she said. “I think actually AI is going to allow us to scale what women have been trying to do for a long time.”

Williams said AI efficiency gains could provide added time that women rarely get for their own careers.

“I think sometimes what women are not good at doing is taking care of themselves and also working on their own career because they’re taking care of other people,” Williams said. “But I think now that they can take care of their career faster, more efficiently, to be able to take care of themselves, to look at what their succession plan is, to look at how they can grow their own book of business. So I think it will propel them into the next generation.”

At Orion, every employee was assigned AI goals this year. One assignment asked staff to identify two repetitive workflows that affected their teammates and find ways to automate them, said Julie Lane of Orion.

“It’s technology. It’s no different than 15, 20 years ago. You had to learn how to use Excel, and if you didn’t, you got behind,” Lane said. “That’s what we tell our team.”