Cary Carbonaro’s Lifetime Honor Puts Women’s Advisor Careers in Focus

Cary Carbonaro’s lifetime achievement honor came with a clear message about what remains unfinished: expanding women’s place in financial advice. “It feels incredible, but I am so not done,” said Carbonaro, managing wealth advisor and Women and Wealth Ambassador at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth.

Carbonaro received The Alexandra Armstrong Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Financial Services Industry at the seventh annual InvestmentNews Women to Watch Awards, held Nov. 5 at 583 Park Avenue in Manhattan. The recognition came on a day that also included the InvestmentNews Women Advisor Summit, bringing attention to both individual achievement and the conditions shaping women’s careers in the field.

Carbonaro described that work as a long-term commitment to changing the profession and making it more welcoming to women. In September, she gave $125,000 to fund a CFP Board scholarship for women career changers. She said she plans to write more books and train more advisors to work with women.

“We just have to see it to be it, and we have to hold ourselves out that this is an incredible profession for women,” Carbonaro said. “And a lot of women don’t even know this. They don’t even know it exists.” Her point reaches beyond recruitment: awareness of the career path is a prerequisite for building a broader pool of future advisors.

Recognition across the profession

The other awards recognized work spanning leadership, technology, client service and community support. Cheryl Nash of InvestCloud received the Executive Excellence Award. Hannah Moore of Amplified Planning and Guiding Wealth was named Female Trailblazer of the Year, while Charlotte Young of Wealth.com received the WealthTech & Innovation Leader of the Year award. Lizbeth Menjivar of Fidelity Investments was named Rising Star Advisor of the Year.

Orion was named Employer of Choice. Marti Marache of Harbor Asset Private Wealth received Portfolio Manager of the Year, Sarah Williams of CreativeOne was named Allyship Champion of the Year, and Cristina Wiebelt-Smith of Gertsema Wealth Advisors received Financial Literacy Champion. Elizabeth Shabaker of Versant Capital Management won Independent RIA Leader of the Year (Female-Led).

The Mercer Advisors San Francisco Bay Area team received The Prudential Wealth Advisors Award for Fastest Growing, Female Led Advisory Team. Melissa Partridge of Loomis, Sayles & Company won The Thrivent Award for Excellence in Philanthropy and Community Service. Together, the honors reflect a wide set of contributions, from growing advisory practices to improving financial knowledge and serving communities.

Creating support after recruitment

Several honorees focused on what happens after women enter the profession: whether they find peers, mentorship and room to advance. Menjivar, a financial consultant at Fidelity and president of the Financial Planning Association of Illinois, said the group’s board saw too few women in the field and too few spaces where they could connect. About two years ago, it started a women’s subdivision.

“When I started, maybe there was three of us,” Menjivar said. “Now there’s about six, seven of us on the board.” The group has added a chat group and held a women-only golf event. Those steps give members ways to build relationships and share experiences alongside their formal professional roles.

Annie Gottbehuet, who accepted Mercer Advisors’ team award with colleague Jojo Cresci, pointed to mentorship as a factor in her own progress. She said she had often been the only woman in a room, while male colleagues invested in her and backed her abilities. She also credited Mercer’s Women & Wealth unit, relaunched this spring, with supporting female employees as well as clients.

Building the next generation

Recruiting remains a challenge for some firms. Wiebelt-Smith said her St. Joseph, Missouri, firm has 12 people and has struggled to attract women advisors. She argued that candidates should see the work as centered on helping people and serving families, rather than as sales alone.

Broader exposure to the career path is another part of the pipeline. In October, Schwab outlined plans for a National RIA Day on college campuses. Set for Feb.

Williams said women remain behind in professional credentials, citing a figure of about 24% of CFPs who are women. She sees artificial intelligence as one possible way to create capacity for career development. In her view, efficiency gains could give women more time to build their own practices, consider succession plans and invest in their careers while managing responsibilities to others.

That potential depends on how firms put the technology to work. Julie Lane of Orion said every employee was assigned AI goals this year, including identifying two repetitive workflows affecting teammates and finding ways to automate them. Lane compared learning to use AI tools with learning Excel years ago: “If you didn’t, you got behind.”

Carbonaro’s award captures both progress and the work still ahead. Scholarships, peer groups, mentors, campus outreach and practical technology training address different points in a career, from first exposure to long-term growth. The next test is whether those efforts make it easier for women to enter the field, remain in it and shape its future.