And that is just one cemetery. Dotting countrysides and hugging cityscapes sit the plots of military veterans, bonded by service and unique in their stories. Many were called to service, with high school dropouts linking arms with Rhodes scholars, those with generational linkages to servitude covering for their fellow cadets. Military members are truly all in this together.

We owe these military men and women such thanks and grace; both those who have returned home from war, and those who perished in service to something bigger than themselves. Memorial Day is a calendar reminder that we all need to put the small things in perspective of those who fought the battles for our freedom, safety, and security.

The American College Center for Veterans Affairs aims to do its part through educational support and career opportunities in the financial services industry. Last year, while restricted in our in-person fundraising by the COVID-19 pandemic, 249 donors—including 112 first-time donors—contributed to the Center and helped us award 250 scholarships, which was a 100% increase in scholarships from the previous year! Many of the Center’s donors were inspired by Campaign: Gratitude, a video storytelling series that told the captivating, heroic tales of military heroes who have returned home to earn rewarding careers in financial services, all thanks to the generosity and support of our donors, and the work of our Center and College family.

This year, the 7th annual Clambake and Soldier-Citizen Award returns with a virtual event on September 9, and a Veterans Symposium is being planned for November 10. We thank you in advance for helping transform the lives of our active-duty service members, veterans, and their spouses.

This weekend, as we celebrate America and all its beauty, remember those who stood, and still stand, on the front lines to forever cement the majesty that is America.

Happy Memorial Day.

The annual “40 Under 40” are chosen by a team of reporters and editors from nearly 1,000 online nominations. “The 2021 class of 40 Under 40 honorees stood out in a remarkable year,” said George B. Moriarty, Chief Content Officer of InvestmentNews. “This diverse group represents the great things the financial advice industry will accomplish in the future.” This year, The American College of Financial Services is proud to announce that Lindsey Lewis, Director and Chair of The College’s Center for Women in Financial Services, has been selected as one of the featured professionals!

In her current position, Lindsey oversees most of the Women’s Center’s day-to-day activities, including original research, social media activity, event coordination, podcast production, and more as she works to promote the advancement of women in the financial services profession through research, education, and awareness. Prior to joining The College, Lindsey worked as a CFP® practitioner for Soltis Investment Advisors and Vanguard. In these roles, she served clients as a CFP® professional to facilitate holistic financial planning for individual clients and meet institutional clients’ needs. Lindsey is also an active mentor to women pursuing degrees or careers in financial services, and helps operate Utah Valley University’s Women of the Woodbury Polished mini-conference—an event dedicated to women and girls pursuing careers in financial services.

Congratulations, Lindsey! We’re proud to have you as part of our team.

Instead of turning this note into a history lesson (here’s a great recitation), let me talk briefly about what the day signifies for us as The American College of Financial Services, and for our nation, moving forward.

First, it is a day to remember. As we frame our work through the Center for Economic Empowerment and Equality, we always reflect on the days of slavery and freedom from that enslavement, but also on the fleeting change in the time since.

Second, it is a day to re-engage. Take some time to listen to public figures and community leaders “…celebrate, educate, and agitate,” in the words of historian Mitch Kachun. Find a personal or professional thread that you can latch onto to help create lasting change in Black communities.

Third, it is a day to re-affirm. The College, through Four Steps Forward, must re-affirm our commitment to the cause. While many have called Juneteenth “America’s second Independence Day,” that independence has not yet equaled justice, opportunity, and equity. That must change, and our work, with partnerships across the financial services industry, will push us closer to those goals.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” So, we remember, re-engage, re-affirm, and move forward not with the belief that true equality is preordained, but that it comes through continuous struggle.

While we haven’t always lived up to those ideals, we’ve never walked away from them. The American College of Financial Services continues to do its part by providing financial knowledge and education to financial and nonprofit leaders, and through our Centers of Excellence, by promoting financial well-being and supporting initiatives that help uplift underrepresented and underserved communities.

As former President Harry S. Truman once said, “America was built on courage, on imagination, and on an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

We, as Americans, have shown our resolve and collective might throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and we demonstrate that same mettle and might each day to uplift all Americans.

We are a nation of dreamers and pragmatists, imperfect and yet still embarking on the never-ending pursuit of that perfect union.

Enjoy your holiday with freedom, family, and friends.

“I’ve always wanted to save people, one way or another, and I’m an idealist,” he says with a smile. “I wanted to be a doctor, but I studied chemical engineering in school and ran a startup business for quite a while. After that, I was looking for a career change.” Coincidentally, his wife was already working in financial services at the time. “She sold me my first insurance policy,” Nick remembers, “and it was she who recommended I try my hand at a career in insurance. She knew I was good at selling things to people and enjoyed caring for them. But she made me ask around at several different companies so I could make up my own mind about it.”

Since that time in 2004, when Nick got his first job as an insurance agent at Ethniki Asfalistiki of Athens, Greece, he has proved himself and his worth to those around him many times over. He was recognized as a distinguished agent, ranked among the “top 10 or 20” of nearly 2,500 employees at the company for his performance, and won productivity and sustainability awards for three consecutive years, earning the prestigious LIMRA Lifelong Membership. After moving up to a managerial position as Team Leader, his current office is first in production for the entire country-wide company. “I come from a family of high achievers, and I realized I could do more from the executive level by introducing new people to the profession and building the strongest team I could to better serve our clients,” he says.

Nick Papastergiou also has the distinction, as of July 2021, of being the only financial professional in Greece who holds a designation from The College.

Taking Knowledge to the Next Level

Even with his significant accomplishments, Nick still looked for ways to stand out in a crowded field. “I wanted to further differentiate myself and offer additional value for my customers,” he says. “I want to show them I have knowledge that no one else has.”

That was when he saw a post from a colleague on LinkedIn praising The American College of Financial Services and its programs, and he instantly wanted to know more. “All the designations sounded fascinating, but I chose the Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) program because I believe retirement planning and pensions will be the next big high-interest item in Greece for financial planning,” he says.

In The College, Nick found the lifelong learning partner he’d been waiting for. “With the RICP®, my education was in my own hands,” he says. “Thanks to the totally online coursework, the time difference wasn’t a problem, and all the sources were provided for me. The webinars especially were great, and the material was very well-written. I was also very pleased with the procedural aspects of the experience; whenever I had technical or credit card difficulties, the assistance I got from The College was excellent.”

The benefits from The College’s programs were so great, Nick says he’s put them into practice every day when working with clients and agents. “U.S. programs don’t often correlate with the Greek reality; however, even when the information I learned wasn’t strictly relevant, it was very interesting nonetheless,” he says. “It’s definitely made me a better asset to my customers and agents, and I always use the ‘18 Retirement Risk Factors’ I learned when presenting to clients.”

Even though not all the information in his RICP® courses is useful for his current reality, Nick says it’s still making a difference in his practice. “It’s like looking into the future,” he says. “What we’re living with Social Security, insurance, and retirement planning, you’ve lived 20 or 30 years ago, and eventually we’ll catch up to that. We have many programs that are similar to yours, but they’re often bound together to resemble the larger, more comprehensive plans the U.S. provides its citizens.” Nick says the long-term care element of his RICP® curriculum was especially eye-opening due to personal experience with the subject. “My mother had a stroke and needs daily nursing care, and she fortunately has my late father’s pension to support her, but if I hadn’t been in a position to help as well, she’d probably be broke,” he says. “I don’t want other people to have to live through something like that.”

Adapting to Overseas Realities

While not everything from his RICP® coursework directly applies to his work in Greece, Nick says there are many things Greeks could learn from The College’s education.

“We need to move things forward, reeducating our agents and customers to embrace diversity and risk in retirement planning,” he says. “We’re waking up to the dangers of poor retirement planning in Greece, because our equivalent of Social Security doesn’t give us as much of a benefit as we’d like, so we need to inform people about the obstacles and how they could derail their plans later in life.”

When asked where the knowledge gap in retirement planning exists in Greece, Nick laughs. “I don’t think there is a knowledge gap, because to have a gap you would have to have knowledge to begin with,” he says. “In my estimation, 99% of Greeks probably don’t have a retirement plan in place or know anything about it. I speak with probably 250 to 300 clients per year, and I believe less than 20 are aware of what’s going to happen to them later in life.” Nick says he used to try to raise retirement planning awareness by having people take The College’s Retirement Literacy Survey. “They all failed miserably, and it just embarrasses them,” he says, also noting that the concerns have even hit close to home. “I have a friend and coworker who’s 51 years old and wanted to talk to me about being overinsured. After several hours of discussion he finally broke down in tears because all nine of his insurance plans were ending and there would be nothing for him later in life. This is exactly the kind of situation we have to avoid.”

For his part, Nick says he’s trying to gently educate his fellow financial professionals and clients and steer them in ways that will increase their knowledge and forward-thinking. “My purpose and goal is to educate as many people as possible, and to let them know the well-documented dangers that can be avoided with planning. I hope my company and I will be able to offer a lot of them the solutions they need.”

Still, Nick says there are some struggles with business, social, and cultural differences between the two countries. “We’re in desperate need of long-term care plans, but we don’t really have them in Greece,” he says. “We jury-rig some products to look like long-term care, but they’re not as efficient. Greek citizens also don’t know much about financial planning. Hopefully my experience will shed some light on the dark corners of this knowledge.” He says he hopes these differences can be overcome with time. “As I said, looking at the financial situation in the U.S. through The College’s programs is like looking into the future of Greece, so I’m hopeful things will change soon with more and more knowledge transfer from the U.S. insurance industry to the Greek.”

Building a Stronger Future

On financial planning in general, Nick had this to say to his fellow Greeks: “You need to take matters into your own hands. Most companies and the state often give people the bare minimum in terms of assistance, so individual advisors must give clients as much knowledge as they can.”

Because of this, Nick says the next step in his journey will be to enhance his knowledge and expertise further with The College’s Wealth Management Certified Professional® (WMCP®) designation. “Along with pensions and Social Security, I think people will soon start asking us about bonds and investing more often, and I don’t want to be unsure of what to tell them if they do,” he says. “I want to let as many people as I can know about The College and its programs, and maybe persuade some of my agents to try them as well. It’s truly been a life-changing experience for me.”

Baby Boomers are retiring at an unprecedented rate, meaning that more and more Americans are facing the challenge of using their investments to maintain their quality of life. For them, the usual investment advice no longer applies. They need the unique strategies you can learn through the three-course Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) designation program. Help your clients thrive while growing your career. Learn More.

The Beach Jumper’s Mission

Cubeta was chosen to head the CAP® program by its funders, Bill and Sallie Wallace. A first-generation college student, Bill attended Columbia University on a football scholarship and became an All-American player. Wallace’s altruism and courage led him to become a “Beach Jumper” during the Korean War. Organized during World War II by Naval officer and Hollywood star Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the Beach Jumpers were U.S. Navy Special Forces officers who performed among the most dangerous jobs in the war. If you’ve not heard of the Beach Jumpers, that’s no surprise, for their missions were considered even more classified than those of Navy SEALs—the organization the Beach Jumpers would eventually inspire.

After the war, Wallace chose a new challenge that drew, in a different way, on his tenacity and concern for others’ well-being: he became an insurance agent. His gifts and strength of character led to his rise through the profession to become the head of Home Life, and to his winning every award the insurance world has to offer. A pioneer in what we’d now call “values-based planning,” Wallace became one of the most admired and revered professionals in the industry.

Wallace also became a leader in the philanthropic world. He knew that financial advisors touch expanding circles of many, many lives, influencing people at inflection points at which they make their most important decisions about life, loved ones, and legacy. If advisors were more open to discussing philanthropy with their clients, he reasoned, they could do enormous good. Wallace also recognized a systemic problem in the philanthropic world: that the nonprofits who sought Bill and Sallie’s help understood their hearts, but knew nothing about their money. Meanwhile, financial advisors knew everything about their money, but were cold as ice when it came to discussing philanthropy. How, Bill wondered, might these two siloed, sometimes even adversarial, worlds be brought together to maximize the good that might be done?

The Mission 

The solution Wallace devised was a sophisticated program that would teach financial advisors and nonprofit gift planners how to work together for a common purpose. They wanted nonprofit professionals to be able to play a key role in a donor’s financial discussions—to be as much a part of an estate-planning team as trust officers are—and financial professionals to be comfortable helping their clients not only accumulate wealth, but also make use of it in a manner the client finds most rewarding. No such program had ever existed. But who better than a Beach Jumper-turned-insurance professional to calibrate risks and develop and execute a winning strategy?

The most important factor in the success of Wallace’s plan was to find a head for the program who shared Wallace’s vision: an expert in finance with a nonprofit sensibility. He found that leader in Phil Cubeta, an insurance executive with strong liberal arts sensibilities and a profound commitment to uniting communities to alleviate human suffering. “CAP® is exactly what they’d planned to do,” Phil observes, “and it’s exactly what I wanted to do.”

Now in their 90s, the Wallaces remain active and in good health and continue to follow the program closely. They respond to the quarterly reports they receive with expressions of their gratitude for a program which has not only realized, but far exceeded, their dreams.

“They have created almost a mini-distribution system for philanthropy, built around financial advisors and fundraisers, and that was their dream,” Cubeta says.

Mission Accomplished 

Early on, Cubeta realized the program would enhance its reach and success by organizing study groups of students taking CAP® courses, but was unsure how best to make this happen. Then, in Dallas in 2010, with leadership from Todd Healy, MSW®, CLU®, ChFC®, AEP®, CAP®, Founder of C3 Financial, Jackie Franey, CAP®, now Director of Gift Planning with The Nature Conservancy, and Jayne Grimes, now Senior Director of Gift Planning at Buckner International, a local study group began to form. Cubeta went to Dallas to address 40 prospective students convened by Healy, Franey, and Grimes at Communities Foundation of Texas.

At first, the meeting didn’t go well. Despite Cubeta’s eloquent description of the program and how their participation in it would benefit their practices and their clients, the audience of wealth advisors remained polite but unpersuaded. Then, Jayne Grimes took the microphone. “Everything Phil said is true, but that’s not why we’re doing it,” he said. “We are doing this for Dallas. We want Dallas to be the most generous city in America!” The result was electric. Eager to become a part of this effort, every person in the room waited patiently in line to sign up.

It was then that Cubeta realized the advisors drawn to the CAP® program aren’t persuaded by the prospect of greater wealth accumulation—which is, after all, already their area of expertise. What draws the subset of wealth advisors to CAP® is an altruistic desire to use their skills to help their communities.

The success of the Dallas group inspired the creation of several dozen other city-based CAP® study groups across the U.S. These groups have significantly enhanced the amount and impact of local giving. Over a five-year period, for example, $1.4 billion of philanthropic efforts can be traced to the 43 advisors in the CAP® Omaha Study Group alone. At any given time, 15-20 study groups are active or in formation. Most are local, some are national, and some are based on groups of affinity.

Recently, George Nichols III, President and CEO of The American College of Financial Services, joined the Philadelphia Study Group. Dien Yuen, JD, LLM, CAP®, AEP®, Assistant Professor of Philanthropy and Blunt-Nickel Professor in Philanthropy at The College, also organized a national study group for Advisors of Color, with 100 slated to complete CAP® over the next year or so.

Mission Forward

The College was originally founded as “the insurance college,” whose mission was to professionalize life insurance sales and thereby serve the public, but that mission has now expanded beyond the insurance industry—and indeed, beyond even financial services. The College continues to flourish by helping our students make a very real difference in the lives of those they serve and to the larger communities of which they are a part. The CAP® program is leading the way.

One of the keys to philanthropic success is proper financial planning. Through the three-course Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® (CAP®) designation program, you will learn how to help philanthropies maximize their donations and resources. The CAP® is designed for experienced professionals in both the financial services and nonprofit sector, and gives you the power to do more with your career.