New scholarship targets career changers, the pipeline CFP funding skips

Cary Carbonaro says CFP scholarship money flows to students even though the women entering the profession now include more career-changers than graduates. That gap is the target of the Cary Carbonaro Women & Wealth Scholarship, launched this month by Carbonaro and the CFP Board. The program offers up to $5,000 per recipient to women who have never worked in financial services and demonstrate financial need, with 20 scholarships to be awarded over five years; Financial Planning first reported the launch.

A 2019 survey by In Her Sight found nearly three-quarters of women were interested in changing careers, drawn by better pay and more meaningful work, and 16% said the expense was keeping them from making the move. Misperceptions about the role did their own damage: women surveyed worried they needed high-level math skills, doubted whether they were outgoing enough, and assumed success was tied to market swings, but once the job was explained, the CFP Board reports, interest in joining the industry rose to 89% from 71%.

The profession's gender numbers make the point: women make up 24% of CFP professionals, a share the board reported last year, and among women who have already made the change, work/life balance, financial security, and renewed energy stand out as the rewards. Carbonaro is a managing wealth advisor at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth, an RIA overseeing roughly $6 billion, so the scholarship is aimed from inside the hiring side of the business.

The program is less about the 20 recipients than the math it introduces: the CFP pay study WAD covered last month put an 11% pay premium on certification, making a $5,000 grant a modest cost for a credential that pays out over a career. Grants do not by themselves build new advisors, but the five-year award window gives the CFP Board and Carbonaro a clean measuring stick: if none of the recipients complete the switch and stay in the field, the profession will learn that money was never the barrier; if they do, expect more scholarships aimed at the same overlooked pool.