For almost three decades, Sheri Fitts has worked alongside some of the elite players in the financial services industry.
She has strategized with financial advisors about how to create leading marketing and recruiting content for them; she has attended industry conferences to talk about marketing efforts; and she has worked with advisors on tools created for them.
Fitts is a sales and marketing “geek” known for her expertise on the digital side, she said. Her first encounter with the financial services industry was with institutional consulting firm Arnerich Massena in her hometown of Portland, Ore.
She had been working as a graphics designer at an insurance company when she took a design job with Arnerich Massena. “I was a single mom at the time and needed a job,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about finances or the financial services industry, but I knew to adequately take care of my son and family it would be a career move for me to move into that area.
“It was a decision to do something from a career perspective that also served me personally,” she said.
It turned out to be a good career move for Fitts. Over the years, she moved into sales and marketing roles, and has held leadership roles at several large financial services firms including Sheridan Road Financial, where she was the chief marketing officer; LPL Financial, where she was vice president of advisor marketing; and the Standard, where she held the position of director of communication and large plan sales.
She currently works on a contractual basis as a chief marketing officer for Hub International retirement plans. But these days, Fitts describes herself as “a speaker, podcaster and author all in the world of the financial services industry.”
She runs a weekly online podcast called Women Rocking Wall Street, which focuses on empowering women and increasing the ranks of female leaders in financial services. The program, as she explains in the opening of each episode “is dedicated to help women who survive and thrive in the male-dominated industry world of financial services.”
Sponsored by Morgan Stanley, the podcast’s guests are mostly females at the top of their professions. Occasionally, she will have a male guest. (Financial planner and commentator Michael Kitces has been on the program.)
Fitts said podcasting was something she had been curious about, but she did not want to focus on marketing or the financial services industry. Then during one of her travels, she exchanged tidbits with her seatmate on a plane. “She found out that I was in the financial services industry and she told me that she was tapped by a private equity firm to be an analyst because of her expertise in medical equipment,” Fitts said.