2023 Women to Watch Trailblazer of the Year

The InvestmentNews 2023 Women to Watch Awards celebrate excellence and the women who are making a difference in our industry. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 7, at Tribeca 360 in New York City, top advisors, rising stars and leaders shaping the wealth management space will come together to recognize each other’s talents and contributions. This year’s Women to Watch Awards feature a new independent judging panel and exciting award categories for organizations and professionals alike.   

As part of this Women to Watch issue, InvestmentNews is proud to profile each excellence awardee in the individual categories. The winner in each category will be announced at the event.  

Here are the excellence awardees in the Trailblazer category: 

Winner: Kay Lynn Mayhue       

President, Merit Financial Advisors 

Kay Lynn Mayhue believes passionately in the power of coaching and uses her influence as one of the few female presidents in the advice industry to help other women take control of their careers and expand their impact.  

As a result, the structures she and her leadership team have put in place have helped the firm attract and retain top female talent. Merit manages more than $8.9 billion in AUM, not including retirement plans, and has more than 220 employees, more than 53% of whom are women.   

Mayhue is also passionate about diversity, but marries this with having top performers in the right roles. Her chief operating officer, Chrissy Lee, is a case in point. “She’s amazing,” Mayhue says. “I can’t imagine my life without her! But her appointment had nothing to do with her being a Korean female; she was absolutely the best person for the job.”  

As a mom of five, Mayhue knows the demands of combining family life with a senior leadership position. At Merit, she has helped make several changes to align with women’s working preferences, including a teaming approach; reinventing roles and responsibilities; women-focused professional training; revised compensation; and flexible working hours.  

Mayhue is a respected thought leader and expert throughout the industry, speaking regularly at events on topics such as servant leadership, M&A (Merit has acquired 18 firms in the past 18 months, resulting in more than $4.25 billion in additional AUM), technology and DEI best practices.  

— James Burton 

Leslie Samuelrich      

President, Green Century Funds 

An articulate and powerful voice in promoting environmentally responsible and sustainable investing, Leslie Samuelrich, as president of Green Century Funds since 2012, has turned the firm around. It has gone from not generating revenue for its nonprofit owners to having $1 billion in assets under management and triple the number of employees.   

Samuelrich has also quadrupled the size of the shareholder engagement program. And in a recent campaign, renowned investor Carl Icahn nominated her to run for a seat on the McDonald’s board to ensure the company honors pledges around animal welfare and antibiotics use. Green Century Funds also recently worked with Costco to come up with a five-year plan to reduce the amount of plastic the retailer uses.  

“I helped Green Century become a strong and leading voice in this space,” she said. “As it’s one of the first fossil fuel-free mutual funds in the U.S., there’s certainly a demand for it, but most other firms have not offered such options.”   

Samuelrich said it matters whether money is being managed by environmentally reckless firms that may not align with environmental values. And because Green Century knows who it is and what it offers, it has attracted loyal investors.    

As for her future goals, Samuelrich hopes she can continue to be a voice that educates and engages investors in environmentally responsible investing.   

“We have a lot at stake, in terms of protecting our natural world,” she said. “There are thousands more advisors who, if they knew more about options and didn’t have the misinformation that has come out recently, would incorporate these options into offerings for their clients.”   

— Josh Welsh 

Beata Kirr  

Managing director and chief impact officer,  The Copia Group 

It took a lot of grit to get to a top job in asset management overseeing more than $100 billion – and it might have taken just as much to walk away from it.  

But that is what Beata Kirr did, this year leaving her role as co-head of investment and wealth strategies at Bernstein Private Wealth Management. At her new firm, The Copia Group, she is one of a staff of five. As chief impact officer, she is building an impact-investing platform for a new company aimed at closing the wealth gap in the U.S.  

“This can be an incredibly selfish industry,” said Kirr, whose family emigrated from the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. “I’ve made it to the top of the industry in many ways, and I feel an immense obligation to pay that forward.”  

Seeing her parents start over in a new country – where their education and degrees meant nothing – instilled the “grit and resilience” that she needed to get where she is today, she said. But along the way, she realized how many people could benefit from having a leg up.  

Over the past six years, she has “spoken out and spoken [her] truth,” which led her to become one of the founding members of The Copia Group.  

Helping women and minority groups – both within asset management and in communities – is a critical part of the company’s mission, Kirr said.  

“It makes a huge difference when you have diversity at the top and grow diversity below you,” she said. “It’s the first time in my career that I’m narrowly focused on this goal.”  

— Emile Hallez 

Paulita Pike  

Partner, Ropes & Gray 

Paulita Pike is one of the most sought-after asset management lawyers in the country, representing every type of registered product, and a fierce advocate for inclusivity. Pike, who is from El Salvador but made Chicago her home many years ago, uses her extensive experience and communication skills to advise clients and drive her firm’s DE&I strategic plan.    

“It is important for people of all backgrounds to have representation in mutual funds. Whether it’s on the legal side, the investing side or the board side, this space should be representative of the public that is creating this capital,” Pike said.  

A true force in the investment management industry, she has worked on matters that have transformed the space to make it what it is today, including representing the independent directors of the Yacktman Funds in 1999, which resulted in industrywide governance reforms approved by the SEC in 2002 and 2004, and advising the independent trustees of the Innovator ETF Trust on its complex defined-outcome ETFs, a first for the ETF industry.   

A recipient of numerous awards, Pike is also passionate about giving back to her community, whether through civic engagement, pro bono work with indigent immigrants or efforts to further diversity, equity and inclusion.   

— James Burton 

Noel Pacarro Brown     

Senior vice president and financial advisor, The Conscious Wealth Management Group,  Morgan Stanley 

Noel Pacarro Brown is renowned for being highly political and uncompromising in her passion to make a difference. It’s why, on maternity leave about 10 years ago, she decided to double down on this commitment and reform her business into a social impact one.  

“I was witnessing our profession and recognizing that, if done wrong, we could be perpetuating inequity globally,” she says. “I refuse to be a part of that.”  

Since then, she’s attracted investors who match her level of commitment. Her practice caters solely for those who want to use their wealth, privilege and influence to better the world, she added, not to “exacerbate the systemic issues that exist.”  

Born in Hawaii but based in Portland, Oregon, she leads a business founded by her mother, Gwen Pacarro, 40 years ago. Over the years, Brown has witnessed ESG go from niche to mainstream, and the recent backlash just adds fuels to her fire. “We feel more committed than ever, in this moment, to help educate people on the ways in which capital can basically save us.”  

The women component shows up in many aspects of her work. The Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn abortion rights prompted her to develop the Women Rise Up campaign, a call to action in response to violent backlashes against women, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, and communities experiencing persistence discrimination.   

Inspired by the trailblazing women before her, she feels optimistic about the future. “I went from feeling allergic about my job to now feeling extremely excited and hopeful about the work that we can do.”  

— James Burton 

Nicole Simpson  

CEO,  Harvest Wealth Financial 

A World Trade Center survivor, Dr. Nicole Simpson’s life changed indelibly on 9/11. Physically and emotionally affected by the tragedy, she knows what it’s like to suffer trauma, spiritually and economically, and uses this to help families who have also endured catastrophic, life-changing events.  

“I have the experience of what regular families go through when they suffer trauma economically,” she says. “The rebuilding process is known to many families. The loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, the loss of your health … they all affect you financially.”  

A CFP before that fateful day, Simpson founded her own business in 2007 while still being treated for medical issues resulting from 9/11. A prolific speaker and educator, she focuses on people’s emotional connection to money and helps them plan for the unknown. Her business experienced “explosive growth” during the pandemic despite markets being down.  

“During a time when others may not have been so available, I made myself readily available to individuals,” she says. “Any time that we have turmoil or uncertainty, my voice has been credible over the years, and one that helps people understand that there is a way to manage your life financially. And it’s not something that can be ignored.”  

Simpson’s reputation grew as a public speaker after she wrote her first book, “Planning for a Reason, a Season, and a Lifetime,” outlining her experiences on 9/11 and how she applied the principles of financial planning to help her recover. Simpson is also a pastor and the author of six other books.  

— James Burton 

Gabrielle Clemens  

Managing director and senior portfolio manager, RBC Wealth Management 

A pioneer of divorce financial planning before these three words were even accepted by the large wirehouses, Gabrielle Clemens knew through personal experience there was a need for this speciality.  

Her mother divorced after 30 years of marriage, and Clemens herself went through a divorce, so she understood the challenges women faced. The Massachusetts-based former tax, trust, estate and divorce attorney transitioned into financial services back in 1998, a time of few female advisors, with the aim of serving single women, independent women and stay-at-home moms.  

While cold-calling, she discovered that many were going through the divorce process. Clemens would help them figure out whether the proposals they were reviewing with their attorneys were really viable for them in a post-divorce lifestyle. What was obvious, she says, was that many didn’t understand the tax consequences at a time when alimony was taxable.  

“You go through such an emotional process that threatens your home, your children, your well-being, so I just became dedicated to helping women go through the process of divorce,” she said.  

Faced with numerous headwinds, Clemens persevered, worked with compliance and is proud to have helped educate and shape the industry. She added that while some aspects of divorce are now less complicated financially, the volume is high, and she sees a lot of grey divorce.  

“The pandemic pushed some people over the edge in their marriages,” she said. “People weren’t travelling and were under the same roof for two years when maybe they weren’t accustomed to that. It requires an adjustment, and some decided to go their separate ways.”   

— James Burton 

Kim Crawford Goodman  

CEO, Smarsh 

Kim Crawford Goodman made her way from Chicago’s South Side to get two degrees from Stanford University and then an MBA at Harvard Business School.  

Now CEO of communications data firm Smarsh, Goodman attributes the fire and ambition that got her there to a strong sense of community growing up.  

“I was very fortunate to be part of a close-knit family,” Goodman said. “We had this ‘us-against-the-world’ point of view.”  

It also helps that the skill set she spent years building has been well suited to a rapidly progressing world. Being a technologist and an innovator in her field has worked out well, she said.  

“Over the last three decades, the major drivers of advancements in business and many areas of life have been a combination of technology and globalization,” Goodman said. “I see advancement in humanity, based on what we do as businesses, as kind of a beautiful evolution. I am really energized by being a leader in that.”  

Goodman started at Bain & Co. and had successful stints at Dell, American Express, Worldpay and Fiserv before being named CEO of Smarsh in June 2022.  

“I’ve had a wonderful journey as an African American female in technology and leading technology businesses, but it has been difficult,” she said. “I haven’t always been accepted in the roles that I have been working to step up to. There are people who have been my promoters, but there have also been people who have been detractors, just because they haven’t been ready for the world that my face [represents].”    

— Emile Hallez 

Dana Wilson    

Founder and CEO,  CHIP 

No matter how many times Dana Wilson has tried to get out of the wealth management industry, it’s always pulled her back in.    

“I think it’s just the love of learning about wealth and money, how it’s distributed, wanting other people to really embody what wealth means and have a new definition for themselves as well,” Wilson said. “Between working and banking, insurance, wealth management and running my own independent advisory practice, it’s an evolution of some sort of love language within financial services.”   

This evolution has allowed her to reinvent her career, going from working as an investment advisor at large independent firms to starting Changing How Individuals Prosper, or CHIP, a B2B financial services marketplace that makes it easy to find Black and Latinx financial professionals.    

“It’s really [about] wanting to see change within the industry and making sure that people feel seen, heard and valued when it comes to their wealth and what that means to them,” Wilson said.   

The best part of her day? Being able to share, talk and learn from other people and sharing parts of her journey that she hopes inspire others to live their authentic selves.   

Wilson graduated from North Carolina Central University with a bachelor of business administration with a concentration in marketing. She also holds an MBA from Penn State University’s Smeal School of Business. Wilson hosts a podcast, “The Included Series Podcast,” where she provides the community with access to information and resources.“ And if that isn’t enough, she’s also preparing to run in the 2024 New York City Marathon.    

— Josh Welsh

 

Related Topics: Women to Watch