Spotlight: Women Adviser Summit
Katz spearheads the Women Adviser Summit, a mentoring initiative designed to attract more women to the industry by connecting qualified advisers with young women who are interested in entering the profession.
The summit includes three events over the course of a year, held in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. Many of the mentors are alumni of Texas Tech’s financial planning course run by Katz. Mentors and speakers explain how the industry works, the training required and the value that female advisers can add.
“We are trying to bring up the visibility because most women don’t know what this business is. They think it’s a lot of stock jockeys, and that’s not of interest to them, but financial planning is far more than that,” says Katz.
At the latest summit in March, about 300 mentors attended. Each female adviser was asked to find a mentee in the room, adds Katz, and “all were charged with visiting their local high schools to talk about planning and what we do”.
