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Stifel's Alex David Tapped for New Leadership Role

News December 08, 2022 at 11:20 AM
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The Association of African American Financial Advisors has appointed Alex David, president and CEO of Stifel Independent Advisors, as its incoming chairman emeritus. In this role, David will provide strategic guidance to the association as it focuses on further work driving a more equitable wealth management industry.

At the same time, association founder LeCount Davis is set to move into a chief advisory role after 2023. He will remain chairman emeritus for the year ahead and a member of the AAAA board. Christian Nwasike will remain chairman of the board; Nwasike is also principal and executive managing partner of Practice Management Consultants.

"I am honored to take an active role in the future of AAAA at this critical moment in time for the wealth management industry," said David in a statement. 

David, who was a ThinkAdvisor LUMINARIES award finalist this year, added: "Having visible Black leadership is critical to the future of a more equitable financial advice industry, but it must go deeper. Working alongside Christian Nwasike and the professional staff at AAAA, as LeCount remains in his role, we will push our industry to make our board rooms, C-suites and branch offices more representative of the communities we serve."

Related to its leadership transition, the association says it is "in the process of building out a multi-racial advisory board of C-suite leaders across the wealth management space, part of a larger initiative to develop new programs to advocate for additional Black and diverse C-suite leadership while supporting young Black professionals seeking opportunities in the financial advisory space."

While some 700,000 financial advisors work in the United States, there are just 60,000 Black Series 7 and Series 65 license holders and IARs, according to industry statistics; they represent about 8% of the total advisor population, despite the fact that Black Americans represent about 14.6% of the U.S. population.

 "We believe we must achieve population parity between the percentage of Black advisors and the percentage of Black and African American communities in this country," Nwasike said. "We need to double the number of Black advisors to meet this goal to mitigate the negative impacts of the racial wealth gap in the United States."

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