Merit’s Female Executives Reflect on Mentorship vs. Sponsorship, Blending Work and Home Lives, and Building Wealth for Women’s History Month
Women’s influence in wealth management continues to grow. Fidelity’s 2024 Women & Investing Study found an 18 percent increase in women stock market investors from the year before. Merit is proud to share that women represent more than 50% of nearly 300 employees, a number that continues to increase.
To celebrate Women’s History Month, four executives from Merit Financial Advisor’s leadership team discuss mentorship vs. sponsorship, balancing home and work life, and their insights into the growing transfer of wealth to women.
Our contributors include:
- Jooliana Krummel, Director of Strategic Partnerships
- Kay Lynn Mayhue, President
- Nicole Denson, Director of Business Development
- Samantha Allen, EVP, Marketing
From your point of view, which do you think is more effective leadership: mentoring or sponsoring colleagues?
Jooliana: There is a place and time for both mentors and sponsors. Mentors can be friends you can trust with feedback and are usually better situated outside your company. If you want to thrive internally, sponsorships are more impactful. Those leaders can provide direct access to opportunities, and their advocacy can help you succeed.
Kay Lynn: Professionals need both mentors and sponsors. The challenge I’ve found with sponsorship is that women are so limited on time. In my experience, so much of the household load still falls on women, limiting our ability to take on additional roles. It’s easy to check the box from a mentorship standpoint, but sponsorship requires a much larger time commitment.
Samantha: I believe in active sponsorship over mentorship. When you mentor, you help guide the person toward the right door, but when you sponsor, you push that door open for them so they can walk through. Both actions have a place in advising future leaders in our profession, but putting your professional capital on the line for someone you believe in will benefit them more.
Can you speak about a mentor/sponsor from earlier in your career? How did they change the trajectory of your career path?
Kay Lynn: I’ve had several positive influences from people who were mentors and sponsors because it benefitted them to pour into me. Early in my career, a female regional CEO met with me a few mornings each quarter; she poured into me because I made her numbers look great. She may have done it anyway, but some magic happens when people pour into you without expecting anything in return. My strongest memory of someone pouring into me with a servant’s heart was my high school boyfriend’s father. While the relationship with the boyfriend didn’t last past high school, his father would invite me for lunch once a quarter at his prestigious country club to see how I was doing in college. He was in investment banking and saw something I didn’t see in myself. We would talk openly about how financial services was a male-dominated industry, and he’d share stories of his female colleagues, which provided perspective and removed much potential intimidation when I entered the industry. He illuminated my entire career path for me.
Nicole: Before I switched careers to work in the wealth management industry, I was an actor and a comic. My first CEO knew I was comfortable talking in front of people, so he helped me early on by providing a script for how to begin and end an event (this eventually turned into my “Tips and Tales” discussions with advisors that I still host today). A good mentor can see through the rough edges and lack of experience to hone a person’s skillset into something they didn’t think was possible.
What is one thing that anyone can do to help someone else with their career?
Kay Lynn: Speaking truth with the mindset of love and support. The worst thing leaders can do is simply be cheerleaders and root our people on from the field. Our job is to coach. After a bad play, a good coach will talk about the blind spots and how to avoid them in the future. The key is to celebrate your team’s successes, but not to the point where you let your guard down. The best thing we can do to raise others up is to be truthful and express radical candor.
Working moms shoulder additional responsibilities at home, sometimes with an unfair distribution of labor between them and their partners. What great examples of in-office initiatives can help alleviate the pressure?
Jooliana: Normalize, don’t penalize. Working parents need flexibility to care for their families, whether it’s driving them to appointments or taking care of them during sick days.
Kay Lynn: As women’s careers become more demanding, we need to identify where we have pride of ownership and what tasks can be outsourced. For example, the afternoons at my house are purely chauffeuring kids to practice. I don’t need to own that task because it’s not quality time with the kids. I can outsource that. In the workplace, pay your people fairly so they can afford to hire support help as their careers grow, and provide flexibility with schedules. Collaboration and community help create a secure workplace for employees. An excellent benefits package provides the insurance and basics to care for their families and themselves. Fun activities for people to gather and have conversations about life promote a positive workplace culture.
Nicole: Too often, we focus work-life balance on new moms, but parenting doesn’t stop when kids go to high school or college; it is a lifetime experience. An advisor told me recently that “it’s not work-life balance; it’s work-life blending.”
Samantha: Undoubtedly, it’s flexible work schedules. It’s table stakes these days for working moms. I don’t know how anyone did it before. Years ago, I attended SHRM’s Women in Leadership Institute, which felt transformational. I walked away with so many tools, including how to approach the conversation of labor distribution with my husband, how to build a supportive network around myself to help me manage the day-to-day, and how to strategically outsource things that are not the best use of my skills and talents.
What are some less traditional ways you have found to help alleviate the pressure yourself (e.g. work from home days, flex hours, etc.)?
Jooliana: I believe in productivity cycles and adjusting your work to your best productivity cycle. My productivity is not at its best in the morning. I start a bit late and then work until 4 p.m., unplug until 7 p.m., and then knock out a bunch of creative things later that night. This also works well since I support our offices on the West Coast.
What observations do you have about the female clients you serve?
Kay Lynn: I was an advisor for the first 20 years of my career. When females take the wheel, they are super effective at financial planning and wealth building, but they tend to be more conservative. You have to fight against risk aversion. Married females also tend to take a backseat to their finances and instead focus on home responsibilities. That can be a very scary place, especially if you go through a divorce or become a widow. At a minimum, there should be a basic understanding from a woman’s perspective and inclusion of a family’s finances in those meetings with the financial advisor. I had a rule that I would only meet with prospective clients if it included both husband and their spouses. I needed to know what was important to them. It felt really important in my job as an advisor if I understood the whole family unit.
Nicole: Early in my career, it was rare for women to join their husbands in a meeting with their financial advisors. If the wife did show up, the advisor would direct all questions to the husband. Then one day, one of the advisors I worked with changed the narrative. She sat the woman at the head of the table and directed questions to her. Statistically, women outlive men, so it makes sense to include the wife in the conversations. More importantly, women need to have the confidence to ask the right questions, especially since advisors tend to use lots of acronyms and language that can be confusing. This should be empowering. Women are much savvier today than ever in the history of investing; they’re taking ownership of what they need to feel secure and safe moving forward. There are more women advisors now, too, who add a completely different lens and knowledge base to investing, which pays forward.
Samantha: There’s research that shows many women switch financial advisors within a year or two of their husbands’ passing. To me, that illuminates the importance of financial advisors building and nurturing relationships with female household members through the longevity of the entire relationship so they can fully support them during those tough life events.
What quote or motto steadies you on the toughest of days?
Jooliana: “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I’m Possible.” – Audrey Hepburn
Kay Lynn: “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.” – Richard Carlson
Nicole: “Play your own text.” – a saying I learned from the theater that says my only job is to show up, play my own text, and not wonder or worry about anyone else’s perception.
Samantha: “Sleep well but always stay restless.”
Women’s History Month, celebrated during March, highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. Merit is proud of its multigenerational firm, built on a servant-leadership style, which empowers its team to solve problems, create solutions, and grow together with its diverse client base.
At Merit, our mission is to empower our clients to be financially wise, protect and invest their wealth, and build a legacy for the next generation to help them reach their financial goals. Reach out today for a complimentary consultation!