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Anna N ’ Jie-Konte
Founder And President / Dare to Dream Financial Planning / Washington , D . C .
Anna N ’ Jie-Konte didn ’ t think she ’ d end up in financial services . As a first-generation American fluent in Spanish and French , with some proficiency in Portuguese , she planned to go into the nonprofit space with the United Nations or the State Department , perhaps traveling the world as a foreign service officer .
But she graduated from New York University during the Great Recession , and quickly realized that nonprofit work wasn ’ t going to cut it in New York City . She took a job with a global events company , and after she organized a wealth management event in Latin America , she fell in love with the subject .
N ’ Jie-Konte got her first real taste of the business as a client associate at AllianceBernstein , then later worked her way up to a junior advisor position at RBC , where she worked four years . But she wasn ’ t satisfied .
She wanted to help others who grew up poor . “ I saw how hard my parents worked and how difficult it was for them to really translate their income into wealth ,” she says , adding that in her job , she saw how “ regular ” people consistently saved and invested and were able to build wealth . “ And I thought I need to bring information to my people .”
In 2019 , she founded Dare to Dream Financial Planning , a feeonly , virtual holistic financial planning firm . Her clients are entrepreneurs of color , mainly millennials . She targets this cohort , she says , because they are in a period of change , and she wants to help them make the right decisions . N ’ Jie-Konte wanted to provide an aspirational message with her practice because there were many people in her life , including her mother , who would say , “ I always wanted to do this , but I never could .” And she found herself and a lot of women doing the same .
Her practice , N ’ Jie-Konte says , has been one of the most expansive journeys of her life . “ It ’ s been such a joy and a thrill to be able to be myself as a Black and Latina woman because it can be very challenging in financial services ,” she says . She encourages young advisors who feel stifled at a wirehouse or a broker-dealer to take the leap as she did and branch out on their own .
Samuel Deane
CEO and Founder / Deane Wealth Management / Atlanta
samuel S . Deane knew he wanted to be a business owner after working with his mother , a nurse who had created her own staffing agency in the mid-2010s . His family were immigrants of very humble means who had come to Brooklyn from St . Lucia in 1999 , when Samuel was 7 and lived in a small apartment together . ( They went to Long Island in 2005 after that apartment caught fire .)
“ Ultimately the [ staffing ] business didn ’ t work out ,” he says . But the experience led to his interest in business school , then finance . He thought , “ Man , this running a business stuff is cool . I ’ m in control of my own time . I can grind as much as I want , make as much as I want , work with the people I actually want to work with .”
“ I remember being in business school and interviewing with different firms and they are all like , ‘ Hey , can you write down 10 to 20 names of folks who have like a quarter million dollars of assets or more ?’ … And I ’ m like a 22- , 23-year-old Black kid that comes from humble beginnings . I don ’ t know anyone who has a quarter million , let alone who would give it to me to manage .”
After school at SUNY Albany and grad school at Hofstra University , and then a stint in the insurance world , he worked for an RIA with an eye to launching a firm serving high-earning young people . He figured he and his wife would be a power couple in the space , he says . But when she shifted into the tech industry , he saw firsthand how millennials in that niche needed help , especially when it came to things like , say , exercising stock options before an IPO with an eye on taxes . “ Being a Black man under 30 and a generalist wouldn ’ t have put me at the advantage I would have liked .”
He started his own firm in 2018 and now has 30 client households around the country and $ 6.5 million in assets , his clients mainly from tech hubs like New York and California . He ’ s got a blog and newsletter and contributes to Morningstar on equity compensation topics . “ Folks with pain points in that field reach out to me . And that ’ s my marketing .” He ’ s also co-founded a venture capital fund focused on wealth tech .
may 2022 | financial advisor magazine | 41