For more than a decade, Amanda Riley Campbell ’10 has empowered women to feel confident in their finances. The Business Administration, Economics, and Accounting major has found new heights at every step of her career, ascending from her days of working three jobs in college, to entry-level client services associate at Strategic Wealth Management, to a senior vice president of WealthSpire Advisors.
She is among the 23% of certified financial planners (CFPs) who are women, and is also a certified divorce financial analyst, accredited asset management specialist, and an accredited investment fiduciary. In 2021, she was named an InvestmentNews 40 Under 40 honoree, and became a published author alongside her sister, a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. In 2023, she became a member of the inaugural Advisory Council for the McDaniel Women’s Leadership Network (MWLN), which is focused on building connections and programs that support women at the college in pursuing their personal and professional goals.
Campbell motivates all her clients to take control of their wealth, but she realized as a young professional that more could be done for clients who weren’t retirees. Seeing her mother become a widow and her best friend go through divorce made her decide to specialize in supporting women who are facing life challenges that bring financial uncertainty.
McDaniel is a great school, and it was close enough to my home in Sykesville, Maryland, that I felt like I could still be there for my mom and my younger sister. My father passed when I was 12, and I didn’t want to completely leave my family for college. McDaniel had exactly what I wanted, and I could tell that the professors and the administration really cared. The smaller class sizes also told me that I was going to get a really good education.
I was undecided until the end of my sophomore year, with zero idea of what I wanted to do. It was actually my mentor and professor, Don Lavin, who sat me down and said, “Listen, why don’t you do Business? You’re already taking the right classes.” I knew business could open a lot of doors, so I was like, “All right, that seems safe.” I ended up loving it.
Don Lavin was a certified public accountant (CPA) and worked at the accounting firm of another McDaniel Accounting professor, Ken Peters. Don just did it because he liked accounting and doing easy 1040s in tax season — which I now find unbelievable — and he suggested that I intern there.
I quickly realized I was not meant to sit by myself with a calculator. It was boring. I was constantly peeking my head around the office and being like, “Does anyone want to go to lunch or get coffee? Anybody want to talk at all?” So, I enjoyed the work, but I didn’t enjoy how the work was done. Accounting is important, but I learned that I didn’t like that profession.
Don was always great at telling his classes about campus events to help us try new things and find jobs. There was going to be an alumni dinner, and he handed out the roster of what alumni would be there. I saw Joseph Garrison ’99 on the list; he was a CFP, not a CPA. I was working three jobs at the time, so I went up to Don after class and said, “I have work tonight, can you please just take my resume to him for me?”
Long story short, Joe Garrison got my resume, and we met up for coffee to talk as McDaniel alum to McDaniel student. We talked about business and what it meant to be a CFP, and I realized it was everything I wanted. Two months after I graduated, I was working with Joe at Strategic Wealth Management Group, and it was all because of that alumni dinner.
I specialize in helping women who are in transition to becoming single after divorce or becoming widowed. My niche is focusing on women becoming the best versions of themselves and feeling empowered and secure with their wealth and money. I love it, and I honestly don’t know what else I would be doing with my life.
As a CFP, I become your family’s chief financial officer. I help make sure that you’ll meet your goals in the short, medium, and long term. Whether that’s buying a beach home, making sure that you have enough money to retire when you’re 50 instead of 60, or checking that everyone has their estate documents done.
Once I got into financial planning and started to get my own clients, I noticed there were already plenty of people helping happy retired couples. That market was tapped. So, I started thinking of what I’m passionate about, and it was helping women who were just like my mom. That’s how I first got into empowering women through their wealth.
Then my best friend went through a divorce, and she came to me and said, “Hey, I know you help people with their money when they’re happy and married. How is divorce going to affect me? How is my money going to change?” It was the first time I had to look at somebody and say, “Not only do I not know, I don’t even know where to start getting you that information.” I began learning how to help women feel empowered with their money as they transition through divorce, and I’ve been known for that for almost a decade now.
So much of what I do is building financial literacy before we even get to financial planning. You can’t be financially well if you don’t understand finances. But I hear from women all the time that they’re intimidated when they try to learn about it. I think that’s often a barrier to entry for women, who think, “I’m not even going to look at my finances because it seems like a big black box of doom and confusion.”
Once we get past demystifying it, financial wellness comes organically. It’s no longer scary, so we can focus on a budget. My financial planning conversations turn from how much money you have to what that actually means for you. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar, but what are you working toward, and how can I help you get there? Money touches every aspect of life, so I always joke that I’m like a therapist or psychiatrist. I’m a professional cheerleader who tells clients, “You can do it, you can meet these goals, you can make life happen for yourself.”
It’s funny, my mom said on my birthday recently, “Amanda always got her birthday money and went straight to the bank to deposit it.” And for my sister, Michelle, she said, “Man, money just went through her hand faster than it could hit it.” My mom joked that it makes sense that I ended up where I am; I always had a save-my-money streak.
Now, going from saving money to spending money to live, that was an adjustment. You quickly figure out that life is extraordinarily expensive. My husband, Alex Campbell ’10, and I met at McDaniel, and we had to decide how to start building a shared life and deciding how each paycheck gets spent.
Even though I had taken accounting and economics classes, a paycheck has very different applications in real life once you are paying student loans, paying for your own apartment. It’s also important for college students to start thinking about joint finances. Maybe you don’t have to compare your finances while you’re still in school, but get a pulse on what your significant other’s philosophy is around money.
My favorite thing in the world is seeing the change in a woman when we get through the process of financial literacy. She may come to me at the beginning of her divorce, and there’s usually a lot of self-deprecation, tears, emotion. There’s usually a lot of, “I should have thought about this before. I should have looked at our books and records.” I go as slow as we need to go to build a financial plan until she feels secure and can follow that plan.
When they get to the end of that dark tunnel, everything is bright and light. They’re so happy, they laugh again, and they feel good about themselves. It’s my favorite thing to watch a woman make the transition from feeling horrible about money to knowing it isn’t something they have to worry about anymore.
There is something powerful about understanding your financial picture. You could have one dollar or 10 million dollars, and it can still be scary until you understand your finances. But seeing people on the other side is what gets me through the days.
I always tell people to start by figuring out what you owe and what you own. That’s 75% of the battle. It’s amazing how many times a client does that exercise and finds an old 401(k) from a job a million years ago. For students getting out of college and at their first job, fund your 401(k) as quickly as you can. If you can do that right up front, you’re almost set for life.
Secondly, figure out how much you spend and how much you save. People love to ask what the benchmarks are for saving and spending. But there are no benchmarks. You live a different life than I live. I live a different life than my neighbor lives. You just need to figure out what you’re doing and what you want to change.
My sister, Michelle Riley, is a personal trainer who specializes in women’s health, and I do wealth for women. When we realized that our clients overlap, we decided to write a book together to merge our two worlds. Because without your health, what have you really got? And when it comes to wealth, would you rather invest it in your health during your younger years or do you want to spend it on your health as you age? We try to help women realize that putting yourself first in the realms of wealth and health is not selfish, it’s one of the most selfless things you can do. Writing the book was a labor of love, and it’s been rewarding to hear women share their journeys to healthier and wealthier lifestyles.
My McDaniel education gave me a more open mind. It taught me that there are different avenues to achieve the same result. When I went into business with my firm, the stance was that we just helped happy couples retire and that was it. And I thought, “There’s got to be a different way to do this.” When I started building my women and wealth platform, it met a lot of resistance. But I just kept forging through, because again, being a liberal arts scholar taught me that there are a million ways to get to the same result.
With McDaniel being a smaller college, students joked about it being like a fishbowl. But if you take advantage of it the right way, there are so many resources on campus and wonderful people willing to give you their time, which you may not get at a huge university with thousands of students, where you’re just another fish in the pond. At McDaniel, the people genuinely want you to succeed and learn in the best way you can.
I say it all the time: If Don Lavin hadn’t handed me that flyer and been kind enough to go to that dinner after hours and hand someone my resume, who knows how my life would’ve ended up?
Contact Carolyn Salazar at csalazar@mcdaniel.edu or go to mcdaniel.edu/mwln for more information.