When Nedra Agnew worked within the U.S. Foreign Service, her profession path seemed clear: She was on a path that might in the future have led to an ambassadorship.
Then, within the early 2000s, her then-partner was a financial advisor and was on the lookout for a CFP trainee to affix his team. She wasn’t on the lookout for one other job on the time, but Agnew specialized in administrative work, crisis management and coping with people. “I remember having the thought: There’s no reason I can’t be successful in this career,” she recalls.
She attended a gathering with a manager who explained that she was “too logical” to ever pass the Series 7 general securities exam, which covers every part from obscure securities regulations to understanding how municipal bonds and stock options work. For Agnew, this was practically a challenge: She studied, took the exam and passed. She found herself in a really different profession — one wherein, she says, she combined every zigzag of her previous experiences, from working in health care to serving abroad, into one job.
Agnew’s story began in Detroit, where she attended a specialized highschool majoring in chemistry and biology. “I’ve been a quant for a long time,” she laughs. At the University of Michigan, she studied political science, sociology and economics before completing her graduate work in public health administration. After graduating from the Michigan School of Public Health in 1977 with a master’s degree, She worked as a hospital planner and administrator for the U.S. Army after which taught as an adjunct at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. She also helped implement California’s tobacco tax initiative. “I did a little bit of everything,” she says. “The dots all connect.”
When Agnew finally entered wealth management in 2001, it wasn’t a transparent break from her past. Her background in healthcare gave her an understanding of how healthcare costs impact clients across the income spectrum, and her work in the general public sector taught her tips on how to manage large systems and budgets. In her words, advising individuals was like switching from large trains to model trains: the identical complexity, but on a more intimate scale.
Today, Agnew, 71, leads a six-person team with $300 million in assets at Merrill, based in Vienna, Virginia. She describes it as intentionally diverse – different generations, skills and backgrounds, all working horizontally quite than in silos. Among her clients, who’ve a typical net price between $2 million and $5 million, there are equally varied stories: One of them is a rancher who can also be nationally recognized as a motocross competitor. Her other customer base includes policy experts, engineers, scientists and oceanographers, in addition to art collectors, business owners and entrepreneurs. Beyond financial assets, Agnew likes to concentrate to clients’ “passion assets” — be it a baseball card collection, a yacht or a rare textile — and incorporate them into their financial plans. “Sometimes these are more valuable to people than money,” she says.
Agnew has also spoken publicly about her own experiences as a first-generation Black wealth advisor. In a Merrill article, she recalled how her grandmother relied on money orders to pay bills — a reminder, she says, of how quickly things have modified for families like hers. “Many of us are first-generation wealth creators and we want our children to have a different experience,” she noted. To this end, it not only places emphasis on financial structures, but additionally on instilling values and discipline in the following generation.
Agnew intentionally keeps this family-centered perspective at the guts of her practice, serving a client base of fewer than 200 households, although lots of these relationships span multiple generations and industries. She even sits down along with her clients’ children before college to practice making a consistent signature – something that prepares her for opening her first account. “It’s funny, but these kids never forget it,” Agnew said. “They keep calling me later.”
Her investment philosophy is evident: “Investments are fuel, nothing more.” What type of fuel that’s relies on the stage of life – income for a 95-year-old, growth for a 30-year-old, legacy portfolios for clients planning across generations. She rejects one-size-fits-all solutions, but is equally skeptical about complicated products. “If a customer can’t explain in simple terms why they own something, they shouldn’t have it,” she says.
Agnew places a high value on education to maintain clients stable even in volatile markets. She doesn’t receive panic calls in times of crisis. “Our phones don’t ring because we scheduled the time in advance,” she says. She tells her clients that it’s about “time in the market, not timing the market,” and filters out the noise with what she calls her “CNN diet,” limiting her exposure to the each day headlines. “You can’t manage money if you’re glued to a screen watching numbers floating around,” says Agnew.
Outside of labor hours, Agnew tends to a 20-by-30-foot community garden plot where she grows more zucchini and tomatoes than she will be able to eat, leaving leftovers on neighbors’ doorsteps. She can also be a board member of the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capital, mentors teens at Camp CEO each summer, and is lively on arts and decorating committees.
Now twenty years into her consulting profession, Agnew says her biggest lesson can also be her tenet: “If you want to be optimistic about something, be optimistic about people.”
