40 Years Down, More to Go!

By Daphne Jordan, NAPFA Chair

September opened a fresh chapter in our NAPFA world. It was the beginning of our fiscal year and of the tenure time clock for our vital volunteer leaders.

Last month also began the inaugural full year for NAPFA’s CEO, Kathryn Dattomo. Kathryn embraces data-driven decisions and has a deep understanding of how associations function. Plus, she is simply a delightful individual. We are fortunate to have her.

Our Past and Our Future

This year also brings a milestone in our history. Forty years ago, an innovative group of advisors connected on the idea of engaging clients differently from the broker-dealer approach. In “The Beginning of NAPFA,” Gary L. Pittsford, NAPFA’s first president, described the financial industry’s environment during those early years. At the time, the idea of not selling a product was a foreign concept. The Fee-Only approach was a paradigm shift in ideology that started small and grew over time.

Today, NAPFA stands on the shoulders of visionaries such as Gary. At the national level, we will strive to effectively represent you and to move our association forward. From a board standpoint, we plan to engage in generative thinking to take an objective, bird’s-eye perspective on NAPFA’s future. What opportunities can we consider? What are possible pitfalls that we should be aware of? How can we use our collective wisdom to look ahead to where our members would want our association to be in 10 years? Such anticipatory discussions will allow us to be proactive about our horizon. I will summarize our reflections in an upcoming article.

Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho wrote, “If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.” We will always aim for better.

Our Present

Living in the present, we will continue to be directed by our core values of advocacy, client-centered, community, and excellence. We will continue moving forward on our strategic drivers of advocacy; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and professional excellence. Please join us during our member briefings—you can register now for the briefing on Nov. 16—to hear updates and actions in these areas.

Right around the corner is our NAPFA Fall Conference, with the theme of “Commemorating the Past, Celebrating the Future.” I applaud Kristin Keith and her team, along with the Fall Volunteer Conference Committee of Barbara Ristow, Khiara Cureton, Franko Gay, Audrey Jones, Jason Schmitt, and Joe Taylor, for their tireless work crafting a memorable experience for us. I hope to see many of your faces in Louisville, KY, this month.

Let me now take a moment to express my pleasure in being a NAPFA member and serving as board chair. In college, I took a class tucked away in the home economics department called “Personal Financial Management.” Later, as a career changer, I was pleased to learn that a path existed to becoming a personal financial planner and, even better, that I could join a group of like-minded professionals to guide and collaborate with on my journey.

Many tributaries have led to where we are now; I am thrilled to be a part of the mighty river known as NAPFA!