CFP Chair Kamila Elliott, partners launch RIA to close racial wealth gap

The financial advisor who made history as the first Black chair of the CFP Board teamed up with three other planners earlier this year to launch a new registered investment advisor — and the firm already has more than 180 clients.

Advisors Kamila Elliott, Shardéa Ages, Emma Foulkes and Brian McKinney opened Atlanta-based Collective Wealth Partners with a goal of closing the racial wealth gap in America from their backgrounds as Black advisors who have worked for some of the biggest firms in the industry, Elliott said in an interview. She helped start the firm while taking over at the beginning of the year as the chair of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, the certifying organization overseeing nearly 94,000 planners nationwide.

Elliott began her financial career with Vanguard in 2000, and the other founding advisors' tenures  have spanned firms including Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, Ameriprise, Cambridge Investment Research, USAA and U.S. Trust. With the average Black household's' wealth at less than 15% of white Americans' net worth, Elliott and other advisors have been leading conversations about how firms, planners and their clients can play a role in reducing the longtime disparity. In July 2021, Elliott and Ages began talking about joining forces together to serve more Black clients. The other two advisors soon joined those discussions. 

"We all spent time in corporate America," Elliott said. "We were all helping people who did not look like us. It's really hard when no one looks like you."

Politics and policy

Will a Republican midterm win spell end of House's finance diversity subcommittee?

October 17, 2022 1:35 PM

About six months after its official launch, the RIA works with 183 households and has about $25 million in client assets under direct management, with more under advisement through retirement plans and other outside platforms. In order to work with a wider base of clients, and not just high net worth individuals, Collective offers a choice of planning on an hourly basis or through an annual retainer fee in addition to the traditional 1% of assets.

To launch the new firm, Elliott and McKinney left Washington, D.C.-based Grid 202 Partners, where Elliott and founder Keith Beverly were both members of Financial Planning's group of "22 people who will transform wealth management in 2022." Elliott and the other founders "had a passion" for working directly with more Black clients, so they moved to start the new firm, she said. CFP candidate Whitney Hill, another ex-Grid 202 employee who won a 2021 FP Rising Star award, and client service associate India Davis are members of the Collective team as well.

In an interview, Beverly expressed support for the new team's mission and said that the industry "just needs more ensemble Black-owned practices" like his firm and Collective.

"They were coming from backgrounds where they were working with high net worth clients and not many Black households," Beverly said. "I'm happy that they're still on this side of the industry and still using their skills and talents to work with communities of color, particularly the Black community."

The status of Elliott and the other founders as role models for prospective Black advisors makes them important to the industry's efforts to engage more with historically excluded groups of professionals and clients. Elliott has also been "an inspiration" to Dan Moisand, he said in an interview. Moisand is a longtime planner with Melbourne, Florida-based Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo and will succeed Elliott as chair of the CFP Board next year.

"She's brilliant, level-headed, kind, generous, a great teacher, mentor and listener, yet true to her principles and strong in her convictions," Moisand said. "Working with her has been one of the highlights of my career as a volunteer. That will all translate to a great experience for clients and her colleagues at Collective Wealth Partners." 

Wealth management

Merrill wealth head wins AAAA award for advancing Black advisors

October 17, 2022 1:04 PM

The new team is now considering going beyond their initial plan of simply carving out their own space in the industry, Elliott said. Other advisors have reached out to say that despite having "all this experience, all this knowledge" in the profession, they aren't working with or for Black advisors and clients, she said.

"So many Black advisors have reached out to me and said, 'What does your growth plan look like?'" Elliott said. "At the end of the day, what we want is a home for black advisors to help close the racial wealth gap in our community. Providing opportunities for people to have a rewarding and successful career — that will make all of us happy."