Bilal Little:
Welcome to another edition of ETF Central. I'm your host, Bilal Little. This episode is really important to me because we're recording during Black History Month and I'm fortunate enough to have Sheena Gray, who's the CEO of Quad-A, the Association of African American Financial Advisors. We're going to unpack the value of what it means to be a Black advisor in America and how they're leveraging technology to grow and scale their business to service clients. With that, Sheena, welcome to the show.
Sheena Gray:
Thank you for having me.
Bilal Little:
How you doing?
Sheena Gray:
All is well. I just stepped off the New York Stock Exchange floor with an interview about our 25th year. So feeling good.
Bilal Little:
I love that. I love that. Sheena, for everyone who comes here, I ask them to tell their own background and story. I don't want to read some short paragraph about who you are. I think your own words highlight what you've done and who you are and where you sit today as the CEO of Quad-A.
Sheena Gray:
Awesome. I would say, Alexa play Drake Started From the Bottom, now I'm here, first.
Bilal Little:
Let's go.
Sheena Gray:
Let's go. So I have been in the industry for 25 years and I had started as a financial advisor. And then I worked in corporate for, where I like to tell people my home where I grew up, JP Morgan Wealth Management. And I managed large global teams in global financial crimes. So that was the start of my career.
And then it evolved into a career in wealth management. And so I continued on several back office roles. And then I led as the head of diverse advisor engagement before I stepped into seat at Quad-A.
Bilal Little:
Very nice. How long have you been at Quad-A and what is Quad-A?
Sheena Gray:
Sure. Quad-A is the Association of African American Financial Advisors. We're the first premier organization for Black financial professionals.
Bilal Little:
Wow. Love that. Now, this is the 25th year?
Sheena Gray:
25th year.
Bilal Little:
Okay. Big celebration.
Sheena Gray:
Huge celebration, all about legacy, legacy, legacy in my Jay-Z voice, right? It's very important for us to honor the legacy of our founder, Mr. LeCount Davis, who is the first Black CFP. Yes. And the other leaders who helped shape Quad-A alongside him. I think that's very important to note.
Bilal Little:
So I want to make sure that this lands appropriately. Look, diverse market segments are everywhere. Women, that's in its own group, Black advisors. But it sounds like you guys are designing an ecosystem to support folks who are underrepresented, but now in the face and background and profile of wealth is changing, you guys are really mission oriented. Could you talk a little bit about that and sort of who you're servicing?
Sheena Gray:
Absolutely. So what Quad-A does today is we work to advocate for the Black financial professional, starting with students. So we work with students across HBCUs nationally who are interested in going into a career in finance. Our job is to help equip them, provide them the resources and the tools to be successful financial advisors. And that's probably the most exciting part of my job that hits home for me, is to make sure that our future is stronger, better equipped than we were and ready to take on all of this great wealth transfer money that's coming soon their way.
Bilal Little:
You're covering advisors. Now, this is a nonprofit organization.
Sheena Gray:
Yes. We're a 501C6.
Bilal Little:
Okay. So it's a nonprofit organization and it was designed for networking and support for those advisors. Where are we right now? And this is 2026. Most folks sit here and they say, "You know what, representation is real-
Sheena Gray:
It is.
Bilal Little:
... but the face and profile of wealth is changing." What do you guys do to support those advisors?
Sheena Gray:
So it's funny that you say that. I just want to touch on that point. I just had a very calculated conversation with our founder and he shared with me, I said, "Mr. Davis, what does 25 years mean to you?" And he said, "It's just the beginning for Quad-A. We're not where we need to be. We are still not where we need to be. And so I want you to take a pause, Sheena, and really start leaning in to the next generation because although we are changing the face of wealth, it's not going as fast as it should be."
Bilal Little:
I want to talk about actually the advisor experience right now for a moment, because I think this is important. Most advisors that are black and brown, would you argue, sit, or not argue, but you can tell me, do they sit at traditional wirehouses and broker dealer firms? And I'm seeing a shift to advisors moving independent. Do you have both sets of advisors in your ecosystem and just what are you seeing from that?
Sheena Gray:
So good question. We actually have both, but the majority actually sit at the larger broker dealers. But what I found out from Mr. Davis last week is that's not what Quad-A was designed for initially. So he was an independent advisor. The other four individuals-
Bilal Little:
That's so funny.
Sheena Gray:
I know. So the other four individuals who he connected with to kind of build to this organization were independents, and he had an attorney and an accountant on his team.
And they said, "As independent advisors, we want to make sure that we are supported. We want to make sure that we're successful as independents." Organically, Quad-A has evolved into this association, in my opinion, for the broker-dealer advisor. But we are really working, we're really laser-focused on changing that because we are seeing more black and brown advisors as independents.
And I think that that access to the independent space, it needed to have some awareness brought to it so that we can increase representation in the independent space. And at Quad-A, that's what we're doing at our conferences. We are creating tracks for RIAs. We are creating the podcast opportunities for RIA advisors, as well as opportunities for them to have main stage presence. So those other new to the industry advisors can see the other opportunities that are open to them.
Bilal Little:
Yeah. Look, I mean, there's something to be said to be a wealth advisor at Ameriprise or Raymond James or some of these independent partners who have been... Edward Jones. There's a phenomenal brand with a lot of these partners.
Sheena Gray:
Absolutely.
Bilal Little:
And then also, there's a solo practitioner who's like, "Look, I would just want to do it on my own." So there's nothing wrong with that. My question to you is, when it comes to the support that you see advisors need, want, want to talk about, discuss, where are they asking for the most support and how's Quad-A sort of stepping in and helping?
Sheena Gray:
I think they're asking for support from Quad-A because I think when you think about it, I mean, I'm a former advisor and you're in your four walls, in your branch or in your office space, you have the support from a practice management perspective, from your teams and your leaders. You have the technology support, but what you don't have is that organic conversation on, "I just had this client, his dad is really sick and he is an older black gentleman and we don't know where his money is, but we know he has some money. How do I have that conversation?"
You don't get that support necessarily as an advisor of color in your firms, but you do get it at Quad-A. You get it at a Quad-A networking event, like you and I met many years ago, where we just had organic conversation.
I tell people cocktails, conversation and talking about money., and I think that's what's necessary to support the advisor, right? Just to help them get in a space where they can just openly say, "I'm even struggling. I've been here three years and I don't know what to do next."
Bilal Little:
Look, most black and brown folks, at least in America, they don't come from a natural financial network.
Sheena Gray:
They don't.
Bilal Little:
In many cases they are first generation folks who have either created wealth, gotten into either university and expanded their careers, and now either grandpa's leaving them something, grandma, somebody's starting to leave them something. So they do need the planning conversations. My question is, in this new environment where it's so digitized, how are advisors even connecting to people?
Sheena Gray:
Digitally, right? I think that they are connecting using now LinkedIn. They're connecting using socials. It didn't used to be that way back in the day, right? But we don't have a choice. When I have conversations with some of our members who, and I just spoke at a conference about this, they're like, "Listen, I'm old school." I'm like, "Let me just stop you, brother. You can't be old school anymore."
So long go the ways of sitting across a coffee table with a client talking to them about retirement planning. You have to be the thought leader on LinkedIn. You have to have a 20 to 30 second reel that talks about, that speaks to that 20-year-old, that 40-year-old. That's how you connect with them. It is not across the coffee table anymore. So you have to embrace the digital age and you have to leverage it.
Bilal Little:
With that, I want to lean into that for a second because this new generation of do-it-yourself investors, millennials, Gen Z, these folks are amassing some serious wealth.
Sheena Gray:
They are.
Bilal Little:
When you talk about the last five years when Robinhood opened up and people said, "You know what? We have access to investment. We want to participate. We're going to go out and buy."
And then you have the rise of both the content creator of influencer who have quasi, pseudo tried to step in to be the advisor, but they're not accredited. They're not vetted. They don't have the years of service or industry experience. My question is, how do you help the advisor navigate that part of the conversation? Because they got compliance issues. We got all these things that we can't do in the business because you have your series seven and all this other stuff. How do you help them with that conversation?
Sheena Gray:
I think what my dad always says, "If you can't beat them, join them."
And so yes, an advisor can't be the finfluencer, but they can connect with them.
They can provide that LinkedIn 20 to 30-second commercial and the finfluencer can share it.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely.
Sheena Gray:
That's how you do it. And so you're right. So many of our firms have these huge compliance walls that you have to get over just to say, "I'm having a conversation with Bilal Little today." I have to have compliance approve that. Finfluencer doesn't. A finfluencer can take your LinkedIn video and share it, no approval's necessary. And so I think it's being creative, using organizations like Quad-A. Quad-A is hosting their first podcast series coming up second quarter of the year.
And so an advisor may not be able in their firm to host a podcast, but they can be a guest on a show. They can let the Association of African American Financial Advisors speak for them, and then they can be the thought leader that the clients need to hear from. They need to start seeing more of that.
Bilal Little:
I'm going to tell you something. This is so funny. I was getting a haircut yesterday. This is an absolute true story. And my barber says to me, "Hey man, what do you think about annuities?" I don't sell annuities, but I'm like... So I'm giving him a little bit of insight. And he goes, "Well, I saw Tracy Morgan who put his $200 million check or whatever his story is, he put this big old check in an annuity and he's getting $18 million a year." And he's like, "That's all I want." And I said, "Well, he probably gave up a lot of upside." That's just one product of, he left so much on the table.
I don't know the full details or scope of what you're talking about, but here's my barber, who's Latin, who he sees himself as a black American anyway, but anyway, that's my guy. He literally says to me, "Hey, man, what should I be doing?" And I'm saying to myself, "Advisors actually need to put themselves out there more because people are searching."
Sheena Gray:
They want to know.
Bilal Little:
They're looking.
Sheena Gray:
They want to know.
Bilal Little:
So go ahead, so expand on just what are your just general thoughts on that?
Sheena Gray:
Yeah. I mean, it is a true marker on why it's so important for the certified financial planner to be in the same rooms that the finfluencers are. So you're right. So the barber may watch a finfluencer or a content creator religiously, follow everything they tell them, but you and I know that you want them to follow true financial advice, right?
So that's where this opportunity lies. I feel like I'm always preaching to the choir when I'm in rooms with leaders at these firms because I don't know if they just don't get it or compliance won't allow them to. It is a huge miss. And I don't want advisors to miss the moment because in five years, will this be the only way to reach clients? I don't know. But right now it is.
And so if it is right now, as you know how things quickly move, I can't stress the importance of advisors need to get on board with these 20 to 30-second reels and they need to start sharing their experiences, just like you're using your platform to share experiences of the barber.
Somebody needs to hear that so they can understand, or light bulb annuity. What is an annuity? Now we're going to be talking about annuities next week because-
Bilal Little:
We should be talking about ETFs.
Sheena Gray:
We should be talking about ETFs, right?
Bilal Little:
No, no, but you're 100% right.
Sheena Gray:
[inaudible 00:13:43] not variable and fixed annuities.
Bilal Little:
This is so true though. No, Sheena, this is so important is because there was a report, I'm not going to sort of quote the site where I found it, but it said seven out of 10 people and investors actually think that the industry, meaning trust, is doing right by them.
So they believe that the industry, from an advisor perspective, there's trust in the market. And this is talking about the future advice. They also said they honor and value transparency. Those are the two most important things that people care about. They trust the platform and then they value transparency. They don't mind paying a fee. Well, some people, Gen Z don't want to pay for anything.
Sheena Gray:
Right, of course.
Bilal Little:
But they don't mind paying a fee and they just want trust, honesty, and transparency. And I think that's a good thing for our industry because there's been a lot of nefarious acts, but it's actually good for the support behind these professionals, would you say?
Sheena Gray:
I absolutely agree. The transparency part is just, I mean, and that's in every industry. You want your leader, as a customer, right? You always want that transparency. Recently, my father has taken ill, and-
Bilal Little:
I'm sorry.
Sheena Gray:
Thank you. I have taken on the caregiver role, and it just reminds me of a conversation I had recently in the hospital, in the family lounge with just family members who were visiting their family members. And I was talking to them about what I do for a living, and always the first question is, "Can you be my financial advisor?" Because people assume when you work in finance that you will be the person to help guide them. And I appreciate that.
And I wish I could take clients, but I'm not licensed anymore. But they were really just giving me all their personal information right there. We were in the family lounge at a hospital, and they just wanted guidance, and they were talking to me about their dad, and they just didn't know what to do, but they trusted me.
And they trusted me because they see me every day. My father was in the ICU for two weeks. And so I was living at the hospital pretty much, but they trusted me. And so they trusted me, and then I began to be their trusted source, like literally bringing statements. I'm like, "Ma'am, sir, I can't give you the guidance. I will give you a financial advisor in this area that I know and work well with," but they trusted me. And I had to be transparent with them and let them know I'm not licensed.
I'm not going to give you my own personal guidance, but I want you to see somebody that can help you. But I could just see right away how that can happen in any other scenario. The trust comes first, right? But what they were looking for was just somebody to just give them the real advice on how to help with some estate planning.
Bilal Little:
You know, you just reminded me of another story, and I just kind of want to pivot a little bit because this is important. I was asked to speak at a church for a friend, and they said they want to know about two things. They want to know about crypto and they want to know about ETFs. Now, I said, "No problem. I'll do it." I'm thinking it's a small church, maybe 30, 40, 50 people, small, little black church, this is what I'm thinking. There's over 200 people on the call. I'm sick the day that I do the call. They had me on the call for an hour and a half.
Sheena Gray:
Oh, wow.
Bilal Little:
And when I got off the call, the feedback was, "Bilal, could you tell us exactly what we need to do?" And again, I said to myself, "The advisor should own that conversation." And this led me to the convergence of the hottest topic in the market, which is digital assets and crypto, AI, and all of that can be infused, wrapped up in the conversation of what is an ETF. I'm just being... Like, that's where it is.
And I feel like the advisor today could actually help with the product conversation as part of the financial planning, and it's just a small nugget, but it's a hook to help them grow.
Sheena Gray:
Absolutely.
Bilal Little:
What are advisors talking to clients about right now or how are they trying to position or hold themselves out there right now?
Sheena Gray:
I think the conversation first, this is me putting my advisor leader hat back on, it should be definitely tailored to what the client's needs are for the moment. I think that, of course, they're talking to them about building their portfolio, accumulating the wealth, and then maintaining. But I think that it should definitely differ for each client, and I can't stress that enough. It cannot just be a broad stroke approach.
It has to definitely be tailored. What I'm seeing more is client events being what the client wants to talk about now, like, IE, I'm having a baby, what should I do? How do I plan? I am now a caregiver. How does that situation look for me? I am planning for children and I'm in fertility planning. How does that look for me from a financial perspective? And I think that clients are now using life events to shape how they want to plan holistically their financial plan.
I don't think it's the way it used to be about, I want to talk about retirement, I want to talk about stocks just now. I think the conversation is more after, I like to say it's the post-COVID effect.
Bilal Little:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Sheena Gray:
Because we've dealt with so much trauma in the United States, people are now thinking of preventative financial care, just like you do with the doctors and you get your, well, I hope we're getting our annual exams here, right?
Bilal Little:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Sheena Gray:
They're now looking at financial planning like their annual exam. I want that preventative health check now. And these are the things that I've experienced. How do you help me get over those humps and plan for the unforeseeable? I think that's what it's looking like.
Bilal Little:
I'm glad you said that. I've been thinking about this for a while. I've always thought about advisor growth. You know this, I was a wholesaler for a long time and the reason why I built such a strong connection to the advisor is, I always understood how his bread was buttered or her bread was buttered. How do you make money? And yes, we're in it to make money, but you also want to deliver an excellent service for your clients. But the best way to do so is to be transparent and honest with who you are because that's what people connect to.
Sheena Gray:
Always.
Bilal Little:
Right? It's who you are. So I've had this idea, I'm just throwing this out there. Look, this is a live idea right now. We're going to throw this out there. I've said people have started to go into these individual silos. I'm a chef by background, I like to cook. Fuse finance and chef or being a chef or cooking together. You like to sing, fuse your personal passion with your profession and you will get more people that naturally gravitate towards you, especially if you're going to hold yourself out there on social today.
So the fact that you're saying these life events and transitional periods, they happen to all of us.
Sheena Gray:
They do.
Bilal Little:
Right? But you still got to go on and you still have to tell your story. So right now, what are some of the good things that you're seeing advisors do right now to really separate themselves to lead into growth?
Sheena Gray:
I would say leveraging AI tools. Compliance, again, has definitely made it so that it's a little more antiquated in a way that they've approached AI. But I think our clients are looking for the cutting-edge advice, and AI is able to bring it quickly, efficiently. And the advisors who are embracing, because we still got a lot of old school mentalities in the financial world, in the financial space, embracing the AI and leveraging it are being more successful with their clients. I think that is probably a game changer right now. It's introducing AI.
Bilal Little:
I'm glad you said that because you opened the conversation up. I think AI is a significant game changer for scale and leverage. And I also, I don't want to miss this opportunity to talk about what I view Mr. LeCount Davis did by creating the Association of African American Advisors.
I know the businesses or the entity is focused on catering to servicing. When you look at the advisors though, all of their clients underneath, they're all not black and brown. A lot of them service other people. And I think this is the unique aspect of what I call inclusive capitalism, right?
Mr. LeCount Davis went to get the education on his own and he said, "You know what? Let's all collectively come together and let's establish and build this." And then there's enough people who like your culture, who like the way you eat, the way you communicate, whatever it is, you just happen to be a black advisor, but you got a lot of people who just, they could be Italian, I want to work with you.
And AI in a world that has gone so technology-based, I guess, or digital, how do you help them think about being their very best self? Because that's what's important right now with the whole AI movement. You got to be as authentic as possible by still leveraging this technology. How do you talk to them about that?
Sheena Gray:
And so again, I don't know if I shared this with you, but I had a two-hour conversation with Mr. Davis last week. I just wanted to... I put him on a Zoom call and I wanted him to just talk to me. You know what he said about what you just mentioned? He said, "I became an advisor because my mentor told me that at church, there are millionaires sitting in the pews, but nobody knows they're millionaires. They don't even know it."
And he said, "In order for me to reach them, you have to find a career where you're a financial advisor so that you can help your community." So to your point about most of our members and advisors not having clients that look like them, when this organization was stood up, that's what Mr. Davis wanted. He wanted our black advisors to reach back to the community by being educated and learning, right?
Now starting to recreate the wheel. Right now, we have our own centers of influence that are black and brown and being very relational with them and building the relationship with the church, building the relationship with the black community, that was so important to him. And so you're right, leveraging AI does take a bit away from that at times. So that's why it's important, as a black advisor, I know, and I can speak for many others and myself, sometimes you feel like you have a responsibility, I know I still do, to make sure that I am back in my community and I'm having those conversations with young women and young men.
And that I'm teaching them how to have that relationship mentality with their clients along with the AI because you do have to have both. You can't just generate a fancy portfolio or deck for a client.
They want to hear that story. They want to hear about your barbershop experience. Maybe they just got [inaudible 00:24:45] and they can relate. They want to hear that. They want to hear that I'm a mom of six. They want to know about all these kids. They want to know how you do it. And that will bring them to work with me in the continuity because as you know, and I'm sure you have many friends in the industry, sometimes advisors go to different firms.
If you're a good advisor, your clients will go with you, if you're a good advisor. That's because you built a relationship. AI can't do that, but people can. And that relationship, I don't think AI can ever replace that.
Bilal Little:
Yeah. I want you to talk about your view on the future of financial advice for young people entering into the space. I'll just kind of share this point. There's a lot of young talent that are going the traditional routes of going to school, getting the education, but it seems as though a lot of firms are... It's very difficult to get your first leg in the door, to get your start where talent is nurtured. You remember when you and I started, when you come in, you take your series 7, your series 63, you do what you got to do, and you spend two or three years on a desk and you learn the business and you better understand what's going on.
What's your advice to the young talent that's out there right now that feels like they don't have an opportunity?
Sheena Gray:
Join Quad-A. That would be my advice. And I'll tell you why. So the conversations that I'm privy to at Quad-A, I see the student going to a Quad-A event talking to a Bilal Little. I see the student just soaking it in with you. They would never, in any other scenario, have the opportunity to just have a drink of water with you and listen to what you do and how you got to where you are.
That opportunity and that access is what's going to help them. People always say, "Get a mentor." I tell people, that is very important, but it has to be organic. I can't tell you how many people reach out to me via LinkedIn and ask me to be a mentor for them. But that's not really how they get to the next level. Every opportunity that I've had was because somebody spoke my name up in a room, but how did they get my name?
It wasn't because they were my mentor. It was because I was somewhere and I was talking to them, learning about them, learning from them. And if they were interested in, as a younger person now with so much access, now you can look them up. If I want to learn about a Bilal Little, I can go online and LinkedIn, I could read your bio, I can probably follow you on Insta and learn what you like to eat, what you're doing, but I could also learn how you think.
When you watch someone's Instagram, I believe you learn how they think. I want to be a winner and I want to be where you are and I want to sit at the New York Stock Exchange in your seat, I'm going to watch you. I'm going to sit and I'm going to watch. That's what I tell my daughter.
Sit and watch. If that's where you want to be, sit and watch that person. And now they can do it via social media, at the convenience, at their fingertips while they're watching a movie or just at home in their PJs.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely.
Sheena Gray:
That is the game changer for our next generation of black professionals. We never had that before.
Bilal Little:
Can I tell you two things about what you just said that are so important? The first is proximity. Your mentor or ideal mentor, they don't need to be right next to you. You actually don't need to touch them.
Sheena Gray:
You don't.
Bilal Little:
A lot of people love Napoleon Hill just because he was putting that valuable information out. He was likely a mentor to a lot of people, writers, leaders, all of that. I'll add to the other side of it. So that's one. So they don't need to be direct connection with you. The second thing is, you mentioned something about going to sit and nurture and learn and just grow. If you ask, and this is advice for young people today, if you reach out to somebody on LinkedIn and you're just going to say, "Hey, can I have five minutes of your time?" That's a waste of time, that person will not respond to you. A better thing to do is to go say, "I've been watching you for the last five years and I love your career. There's some questions that I cannot Google that I would like your time about."
Sheena Gray:
That part.
Bilal Little:
Now the person's going to sit there and say, "Hmm, that's a different approach. I might have to respond to that."
Sheena Gray:
Absolutely. I might have to give them some time.
Bilal Little:
You might have to give them some time because there was some thought to it, there was intention to it, but I think the way that you articulated that point was really valuable.
Sheena Gray:
Absolutely. It's funny when I walk into an event and someone says, "How's Bella and Ella?" And I pause. I want to talk to you more now.
Bilal Little:
Yeah.
Sheena Gray:
You know my kid's name. That's a game changer, okay?
Bilal Little:
Yeah. I love that. I love that. Sheena, I'm going to switch it up on you.
Sheena Gray:
Okay.
Bilal Little:
I want to know what is one song, because Sheena's a singer. She's a singer, by the way. What is one song that is on rotation that people don't know or will not expect you to be listening to?
Sheena Gray:
TI, Let Them Know. Every morning, every morning, every afternoon. I tell people I'm a student of hip hop. Don't let the suit fool you. But raised in the South Side of Chicago every morning. Before that, it was Set It Off by Lil Boosie.
Bilal Little:
Okay.
Sheena Gray:
Every morning. That's my jam. Get in your head, get ready. You got this.
Bilal Little:
It's a mental game. That's right.
Sheena Gray:
That's what I need every morning. I need my hype music every morning.
Bilal Little:
Sheena, thank you for joining ETF Central.
Sheena Gray:
Thank you for having me.
Bilal Little:
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. We talked about an advisor, how they scale, how they grow, how they leverage technology, and what's changed given the dynamics of various demographics in America. We are really excited about where we go from here, so please stay tuned, join the next episode, and visit us at etfcentral.com.