It takes a crazy amount of dedication and commitment to become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER certificant, and even more if you want to own your firm. The amount of paperwork I produce is unreal, trust me. I do this because I love it and it is so unbelievably satisfying to see the look on my client’s faces when I tell them that the numbers say they can achieve that “far-fetched” dream.

I fell into this profession accidentally. I was working at my first job out of college as a conference manager. My project at the time was to plan a conference focused on wealth management in Latin America. Part of that process was to conduct interviews with industry experts on what they did on a daily basis, what their challenges were, where they saw the industry heading, etc. The more I conducted these interviews, the more I realized that being a financial advisor involved so many of the things I loved most– building deep relationships with clients; problem-solving; research; serving as a trusted resource. I leaped to the financial services industry about 6 months later, and haven’t looked back since.

Before starting Dare to Dream, I worked in wealth management at some very big firms. I learned so much from each job I had, but I was mostly focused on working with very wealthy clients and didn’t feel the same draw to those relationships. I guess I just couldn’t relate to them the way I could to people who were like me- regular folks just trying to figure out how to get ahead financially and change their family’s financial future. Reviewing a Generation-Skipping Trust document wasn’t nearly as appealing as helping someone figure out whether they should refinance their student loans, how much financial support they could offer their parents, or whether a Roth or Traditional IRA was more appropriate. I get such a thrill from problem-solving, and genuinely love creating cool excel spreadsheets (just ask my husband how geeked-out I get when I create a new one).

I come from a very regular family. My father is an immigrant, and my mother grew up very humbly. They didn’t teach me much about money growing up, so it was mostly a source of stress for me my entire life. That was until I took the time to run numbers, and felt the proverbial rock come off my chest. I love being able to do that for my clients– regular people who just want to live a great life free of financial stress.