Eleanor Blayney, CFP® to Serve as Special Adviser on Gender Diversity for the CFP Board Center for Financial Planning

The CFP Board Center for Financial Planning today announced that Eleanor Blayney, CFP® is the new Special Adviser on Gender Diversity, a role in which she will continue to build upon the Center’s Women’s Initiative (WIN) and provide valuable guidance on its other initiatives to increase racial, ethnic and generational diversity within the financial planning profession.

For the past eight years, Blayney served as CFP Board’s Consumer Advocate working to educate the public on making smart financial moves and the value of financial planning.

“Eleanor helped put CFP Board on the map as a go-to resource for personal financial planning advice,” said CFP Board Center for Financial Planning Executive Director Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis. “She has also been doing important work to put financial planning careers on the map for women and girls who may not have otherwise considered joining our profession. I’m very pleased that she’ll be continuing to help build and shape the Center’s efforts to advance the cause of creating a more diverse group of financial planners for the future.”

Since its launch in 2013, Blayney has been a guiding force behind WIN, which seeks to address the shortage of women in the financial planning profession. On behalf of the WIN Advisory Panel – comprising women professional leaders in financial services and diversity experts – Blayney authored Making More Room for Women in the Financial Planning Profession, a 2014 white paper which presents the findings of a comprehensive research study on why there are not more women CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals and offers recommendations to help attract more women to the profession. Based on those recommendations, she spearheaded the WIN Advocates program to enlist CFP® professionals to reach out to girls and women with their personal stories about why they chose financial planning as a career. Blayney has also created partnerships between the Center and girls’ education and financial literacy providers such as Invest in Girls, Rock the Street, Wall Street, and the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools.

“As a woman, becoming a CFP® professional was one of the best decisions I have ever made.  Women have so much to offer to the practice of financial planning, but unfortunately there are many women, people of color and Millennials, who are not aware of the opportunities or who do not feel welcome in the profession.  There is a lot of work to be done to address the lack of diversity within the profession to create a community of financial planners who are truly representative of the populations we serve. I’m proud to be part of this vital work,” said Blayney.

Prior to becoming CFP Board’s Consumer Advocate in 2009, Blayney served as the only woman partner in a four-partner firm, drawing upon her female intuition, communication strengths, and facility for sustaining relationships to help build a wealth management firm that has served hundreds of clients in the Washington, D.C. metro area and around the country. She has taught for the College of Financial Planning, and has helped to develop practice standards and ethical requirements for CFP® professionals in the U.S. She is also the author of “Women’s Worth,” a book about how women can make the most of their financial lives. In 2015, she was among 20 financial advisors and industry executives honored on InvestmentNews’ inaugural “Women to Watch” list.

Blayney earned an MA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge UK and an MBA from the University of Chicago. She has been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional since 1990.