DIVERSITY, EQUITY, & INCLUSION
How One Financial Planning Firm Tackles DEI
By Samer Eshmawy
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are priorities for many NAPFA members. Here’s an overview of how one firm, my employer Modera Wealth Management, cultivates DEI within our firm and the profession of financial planning. I hope you find this overview helpful as you explore DEI tactics in your workplace and communities.
DEI touches every part of our workplace internally, as well as every interaction we have externally, whether it’s with a client, job candidate, center of influence, or vendor. Thus, in developing an overarching DEI strategy, we reviewed our inward and outward initiatives through a DEI lens.
Internal Initiatives
Modera’s first step was to establish a DEI committee in the summer of 2020. Composed of volunteers from all levels of the organization, the committee has a charter to develop, implement, and promote our DEI policies and maintain programs that support them. It is also responsible for promoting DEI in our staff recruitment and selection, providing resources to employees to better understand DEI, and collecting and sharing data about the status of the firm’s DEI efforts.
To begin, we brought in experts to speak to our staff on various foundational DEI topics, including allyship, systemic bias, and inclusive communications. In addition, our owners and hiring managers attended inclusive hiring workshops. These initiatives have become integral components of Modera’s employee onboarding program for new hires, as well as ongoing continuing education for existing staff and our management team.
The committee also has developed a number of internal resources and new initiatives to promote staff engagement around DEI, including a dedicated DEI Microsoft Teams channel, a DEI newsletter, discussion circles, and educational and social events throughout the year in which staff can learn from one another and share experiences.
Outward Initiatives
In addition to fostering a DEI culture within our firm, we also wanted to look outside our organization to make a positive impact on our profession and communities.
We started our outward initiatives by collaborating with two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) with financial planning programs that were interested in partnering with us. Our firm has committed to multiyear scholarships, internships, and mentorships for students enrolled in their financial planning programs. Additionally, we have hosted webinars at those schools to further the awareness of Fee-Only financial planning among students, many of whom did not know it existed, and we are planning a “Day in the Life of a Financial Advisor” program to show students what to expect on a typical day in our profession. Our hope is that by providing meaningful and substantial scholarships and mentorships, we can increase diversity within financial planning, build lasting relationships with faculty and students, and directly affect the future diversity within Modera’s workforce.
I’m especially excited about our most recent endeavor. We are piloting financial literacy initiatives in our local offices in eight states along the Eastern Seaboard. Providing financial education to underrepresented communities can have an immediate direct impact as it empowers individuals to create a financial foundation for their families for generations to come (see “How Financial Advisors Can Help Develop Financial Literacy Among Children in Underserved Communities,” also in this issue of the NAPFA Advisor).
Reflections
You constantly hear the phrase “lead by example,” and we all know it to be true if you want to inspire change within your firm. To truly embrace a DEI culture requires employees to feel comfortable with being themselves, which creates an environment in which individuals can contribute to the culture of an organization rather than conform to it.
We, as a firm, agreed that our differences make us stronger, so we started by “looking in the mirror,” establishing internal standards and programs to understand what we could do to effect change within our firm, and then reaching outward to find opportunities like partnering with HBCUs and local financial literacy initiatives where we could make a measurable impact within our profession and our larger communities.
Similar to how we each may choose to invest for our clients, diversity within your firm can have tremendous benefits, with its own return on investment. We are each just different asset classes with unique characteristics and, when working together, we can weather storms for the long term.
Modera has provided me and all staff with a variety of opportunities to learn and contribute to causes that are near and dear to us. I’m excited to see what the future has in store as we continue to keep an inclusive, welcoming workplace a top priority.
Samer Eshmawy, CFP®, is a senior planning associate at Modera Wealth Management LLC. Reach him at samere@moderawealth.com.
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