On a mission to make the advisory industry more female-friendly

Some children connect with their fathers over a shared interest in cars or baseball. For Cary Carbonaro, director of women and wealth services at Advisors Capital Management, it was money.

Carbonaro’s dad, a banker at JPMorgan Chase, taught her about financial literacy from an early age. After graduating from college, she followed in her father’s footsteps and joined his old firm as she embarked on her career in wealth management. 

A natural fit and “incredibly passionate,” she eventually decided to open her own practice in Florida but was forced to close it while going through a difficult divorce. She then landed at United Capital, which was later bought by Goldman Sachs.  

Now at Advisor Capital Management, an independent RIA, Carbonaro has a clear runway to start focusing on her own business goals once again, including increasing financial literacy among women.

“The industry is made by men, built by men, for men. Women are like an afterthought in the industry,” Carbonaro says. “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just how it grew up, and if you think about it, women did not even get the right to have their own credit cards or bank accounts in their name until the 1970s in the United States. We’ve actually come a long way, but we’re still obviously not equal to where we should be.”  

Part of the problem is the many women believe in the stereotype that they’re bad with numbers, Carbonaro says.

“Money does not equal math, and math does not equal money,” she says. “They’re actually separate, and you can do one without the other. You don’t have to be a trigonometry expert to understand the basic principles of financial literacy and money.”  

However, Carbonaro has her work cut out. At present, the financial industry is split 80 percent men and 20 percent women. “There’s so much that I want to do, and so much of an impact that I want to make on the industry. I have a lot of business ideas related to women and money that are just percolating,” she says.  

One of her ideas to help women is to identify female-friendly businesses in the financial industry. 

“We’re not where I want us to be,” she says. “I hope that we can get there during my lifetime. That’s my goal so we can really change the industry so it’s more for women. There’s been a lot of Harvard Business Review studies done that show we have potential to be female-friendly as an industry, but we’re failing miserably. It will take a lot of groundswell and a lot of women coming together to try to fix this issue.”