RTSWS students from Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas were given the red carpet treatment last month during their field trip to the Fidelity Investments regional offices in Westlake, Texas. Fidelity Investments has a long tradition of community service in the neighborhoods where their employees work and live. They are making a difference in the Dallas schools by offering high school girls the RTSWS program so that they may work on financial projects which teach them the basics on savings and investments, as well as inform them about careers in the financial field. Fidelity Investments is providing students and their families with an educational foundation to attain personal and financial success.
Financial pros, during the panel discussion offered what they liked best about their jobs including:
Helping people who are starting a new job enroll into a company 401k
Helping employees invest their 401k money wisely
Helping families save for a home
Helping parents save for their children’s education
Helping individuals who are planning their financial retirement
The pros then offered the girls the inside scoop—the best thing about working at Fidelity Investments? The people!
What our corporate volunteers are saying about RTSWS
Listen in as Leah Sandock, Senior Vice President of Communications and Education at Fidelity Investments offers her observations on what the RTSWS program brings to the students she has been instructing in Dallas.
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When asked why girls should participate in the RTSWS program, Leah, who grew up with a single mom who instilled in her to be self sufficient said, “There’s so much to gain by being in this program. You’ll learn things that you may not learn in school about when it comes to your own financial wellness and how to be successful… and making sure you have enough money to live a good life….”
“(We as volunteers) are also hoping to motivate you… You’re going to learn (about) and see women in financial services careers and how we’ve gotten there and some of the stumbling blocks we’ve overcome…We’re hoping to motivate and empower you to want to do better for yourself to go to college and get into the area of finance.”
You can’t see them right now, but all of our Dallas students are totally doing a happy dance!
Please feel free to invite like-minded investment professionals to this MidSouth Alternative Investment Association (MSAIA) event hosted by Elliott Davis Decosimo, Trident Fund Services and Cowen Prime Services.
Speaker Biographies:
Meredith Jonesis an internationally-recognized researcher, writer, speaker and expert in the alternative investment industry with over 19 years of experience. Meredith is an alternative investment consultant and author of Women of The Street: Why Female Money Managers Generate Higher Returns (And How You Can Too), which won an Axiom Award Gold Medal in 2016. She was also named as an Inc. magazine’s “17 Inspiring Women To Watch in 2017” and has presented her research internationally—including conferences in Tokyo, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Sydney, Geneva and more.
Beth Johnson, CFA, CAIA partner and senior investment consultant at Mercer Investment Consulting, currently services endowments or foundations clients with more than $7 billion in aggregate assets under advisement, focusing on asset allocation, investment manager selection, performance evaluation, and fund operations and governance. In addition, Beth is a voting member of Mercer’s Endowment and Foundation Investment Committee.
Angela M. Helbig, CFA, CMT, Founding Principal of Capital Management, LLC, is Chief Investment Officer and is responsible for the management of the 576 Family of Funds equity portfolios and for construction and management of all HMS investment portfolios. Angie has more than 20 years investment experience and has managed a diverse mix of assets including enhanced cash, equities, taxable and tax free bonds, REITs, and commodities.
Lisa Calhoun, Managing Partner of Valor Ventures, is the first woman to launch a venture capital firm in Georgia. Her leadership has contributed to over a billion dollars in liquidity, including supporting exits in adtech, legal, energy and emerging b2b technologies. She serves on the global Board of 100,000-member Women Who Code. She is active on the board of Atlanta Women in Alternatives, Georgia Association of Pension Plan Trustees, and the emerging manager committee.
For the third year running, employees from TD Ameritrade’s regional offices located in Ft. Worth,TX offered our students a multi-sensory experience and showed what it takes to work in the financial services field.
RTSWS students from V.R. Eaton High School and Byron Nelson High School traveled to the TD Ameritrade offices for this year’s field trip and met the women working there – women in technology, client services, investment consulting, brokerage operations and critical roles for its institutional business. The fall semester capstone field trip helps students link the RTSWS classroom financial projects to the real world.
Here’s what they did:
Toured departments
Participated in team huddles with TD Ameritrade staff members
Took part in a “Dream Big” presentation
Our students saw what it’s like to work in an innovative financial environment. With TDA’s recent acquisition of Scottrade, everyone in the office is working on all cylinders and the students could feel the excitement in the air.
Coming this spring, TD Ameritrade professionals will mentor the girls and bring more of the resources of the financial community to the each student’s individual learning experience.
What high school teachers are saying about RTSWS
“Absolutely Amazing” “The program, for me as a teacher, is another way for to open up doors for my students. They are exposed to dozens of women who are coming from diverse backgrounds, and ended up in the financial services industry. They can learn from these women (about how to save and invest and careers). They can glean from the pearls of wisdom they’re receiving from the women, and they can use those to help plan for their own future.”
“The program has been absolutely amazing! The volunteers who come into the school and work with the girls are very knowledgeable, they’re understanding and they’re empathetic. They really reached out and developed relationships with my students which is the reason why we have 27 of them here today.”
Stay tuned for more from our champion school teachers, volunteers and students!
Rock The Street, Wall Street is a financial literacy program designed to correct income inequality and spark the interest of high school girls into careers of finance.
Thank you TD Ameritrade for your support over the years.
According to the Urban Dictionary online, “Walk The Talk” means:
Back up or prove what’s said with action
Represent words with action
Practice what’s preached
The financial professionals from Jackson National Life Insurance (Jackson) in Cool Springs, Tennessee did just that during a jam-packed day of learning and exploration for students from Centennial and Ravenwood High Schools in Tennessee.
The day started with Elizabeth Griffith, Vice President, discussing what it is to be financially responsible. Some of the benefits of being smart from a young age about money include:
Social Life – You get to do more stuff with your friends
Relationships – 65% of couples state they argue about money. Being financially fit allows you to enter into this very important dialog from a position of strength
Health – People who are in debt are three times more likely to have a mental health problem than those who aren’t.
Later in the day, the panel discussion on financial professions gave students an open forum to get multiple perspectives on the typical work week, rewards of the job and advice on how to plan their future.
“These girls have learned how to seek out information they didn’t have before. This will allow them to become more well-rounded,” said Bree Cordes, a Hybrid Wholesaler with Jackson and a returning RTSWS mentor. She told the students. “Being financially secure sets the stage for being confident in so many other areas of your life. It allows you to be true to who you are personally and professionally.” Bree also stressed the importance of taking advantage of participating in the RTSWS mentorship program this coming Spring so that they have someone who can answer questions about savings and investments, college search, college expenses, job shadowing, internship opportunities and career preparedness. The message hit home as EVERY student at the field trip signed up for a Jackson mentor to continue their journey into business and finance.
You’re kind of a big deal, Jackson! Just ask our students. Thank you for your continued support of RTSWS throughout the years.
