Financial advising while Black

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After a successful career in advertising, Erika Williams decided it was time for a change. She went back to school to get an MBA at the University of Chicago, and eventually, in 2012, she got a job at Wells Fargo as a financial advisor. It was the very job she wanted.

Erika is Black–and being a Black financial advisor at a big bank is relatively uncommon. Banking was one of the last white collar industries to really hire Black employees. And when Erika gets to her office, she's barely situated before she starts to get a weird feeling. She feels like her coworkers are acting strangely around her.

"I was just met with a lot of stares. And then the stares just turned to just, I mean, they just pretty much ignored me. And that was my first day, and that was my second day. And it was really every day until I left."

She wasn't sure whether to call her experience racism...until she learned that there were other Black employees at other Wells Fargo offices feeling the exact same way.On today's episode, Erika's journey through these halls of money and power. And why her story is not unique, but is just one piece of the larger puzzle.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:06.8	After a successful career in advertising, Erica Williams decided it was time for a change.
0:13.8	She went back to school, got an MBA at the University of Chicago, thinking, I don't know,
0:19.0	maybe I'll take a management job.
0:21.6	But while she was there, I just got fascinated with economics and the capital markets.
0:27.7	And I excelled in those classes.
0:30.8	And I was just like, I'm really good at this.
0:32.5	I really enjoy doing this.
0:34.6	And so that became my focus.
0:36.3	Erica graduated in 2008, not a great year to enter finance, but she found a job at an insurance
0:42.8	agency.
0:43.8	The whole time knowing what she really wanted to do.
0:46.8	She wanted to be a wealth manager, a financial advisor.
0:49.9	At one of the big banks, the person you go to to help with your investments and retirement
0:55.1	accounts.
0:56.1	It manages your portfolio.
0:58.0	And then one day, one of those banks called her.
1:02.1	Wells Fargo wanted to recruit her for that exact job in one of Chicago's richest suburbs.
1:08.3	When they told me that they had an office in Deerfield, Illinois for me, I knew that the
1:12.0	commute over two hours, one way, would be worth having an office in Deerfield.
1:20.8	I see.
1:21.8	Just because it was like so fancy and so wealthy.
	...

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