Her Story
About Amy
I oversee our team here in Northern California for Fiduciary Trust International, but I also serve as the direct point of contact and lead advisor for a lot of our client families, not just in California, but also cross-border clients and clients on the East Coast and Midwest, because most of our clients have multiple homes and multiple connections. A typical day may look like a few client meetings, which may be leading family meetings related to talking about philanthropic goals and different guiding thoughts and views of how a philanthropic strategy could come to play and actually is delivered within a client family. I also typically talk to clients about distribution requests or needs in cases where I serve as a co-trustee alongside a family member, discussing the investment portfolio and whether we're taking appropriate risk and making the right decisions to approve specific distributions related to beneficiaries. I do financial planning for clients going through major life transitions, like a client today who was blindsided by a divorce after 26 years of marriage. A lot of it is therapy, being there for them, letting them vent, letting them feel heard and be seen through difficult life stage events, and also working through what a new goal or new achievement could look like because their life is changing right in front of them, trying to help them envision what a future could look like. There are fun times as well, like last night when I spent time working with an AI entrepreneur in his late 20s who's excited about selling his company but also nervous about the decision. On the management side, it's rallying the team, collectively focused on how we best serve our clients through various different life stages and sensitivities. The easy part for us is covering the financial matters, the investment management, and tax questions. The harder part is trying to figure out if somebody is making the right decision for themselves, being a little bit of a chameleon based on understanding where they are currently and meeting them there, not just from an advice standpoint but also just being a good human, being a good person to another person, being there and listening to what they're going through, because wealth doesn't solve for everything.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Amy
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice would be to take risk. Women, I have noticed, tend to discount themselves a lot because they are worried, similar to what I've gone through in my own career and personally, too worried about what other people are going to think or say. I think we think too much. If I were to say to my younger self or to my niece, for example, it's like stop worrying too much about the future and what other people think. If you have a hunch, trust your gut, right? And if you have a passion for something, go for it while you're younger, because there's a lot that can be learned from failures and mistakes, whereas I was raised to be more of a perfectionist and to avoid those things. Failure and mistakes, actually, that's the time when you're thrown in the fire, and when you take risk, when you don't know all of the answers, are the largest, more, or the most poignant points where I learned so much more about myself so quickly. And I also learned faster about what I was solving for.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity is the value I always lead with, which has been sometimes conflicting at work. But always with integrity, I have to feel like I can live with myself with whatever decision that I've made, or whatever guidance or advice that I've shared with somebody, especially if they're trusting me almost wholeheartedly with managing their wealth and their wealth plans and they lean on me with a lot of what's going on in their lives. So integrity, trust, is another big one. And just, I have a high knack for basically wanting to treat others the way I would want to be treated in that situation or event, and I kind of live by that, personally and professionally.
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