Ep. 15 – Women’s Circle With Mary Ballin and Kelly Shikany

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Women’s Circle

My guests today are Kelly Shikany and Mary Ballin, two women I met in Seattle back in 2014 at my very first encounter with circle training.

Our program was led by Elizabeth Jetton and Eleanor Blayney, two dynamic leaders with a long list of accomplishments in the financial planning world. 

Many people have some idea, right or wrong, about what it might be like to work with a financial advisor.  But circles are entirely different.

I like to describe them as a way of creating a safe space for women to talk about personal finances.   There is some structure to the circle and the process but otherwise, it is a simple gathering of people.  There is an absence of hierarchy, with no one leader or expert.  In the circle, everyone is responsible for their own taking and sharing of knowledge. We learn better and more when we learn together.  Attendees leave with a little deeper understanding of their own abilities and encouragement to go on with engaging in their own financial life.

In our conversation today, we touched a little bit on when we met and how we run our own women’s circles.  They talked about the impact they’ve witnessed in using this unique forum to help women help themselves be more confident and engaged in their own financial lives.

Avea hosts our own women’s circles on a quarterly basis.  You can stay up to date by checking our events page, or by joining our facebook group.

About Mary Ballin.  Mary is a Certified Financial Planner™ pro and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst with Mosaic Financial Partners in the San Francisco Bay area and has been with them since 2003. She works out of their East Bay office. She earned the CFP® designation in 2010 and just obtained a new designation (CDFA®) Certified Divorce Financial Analyst designation in 2018. She specializes in working with women particularly those in transition, such as divorce & widowhood. She, along with colleague Liz Revenko, hosts quarterly Mosaic Women’s Circles.

About Kelly Shikany:  Kelly has over 24 years of investment management experience and is a fierce advocate for the woman investor who may be managing life’s milestones. Since 2006, she’s been a Certified Financial Planner™ Pro and the Indiana Life & Health Insurance Producer License.

Kelly focuses on conversations in retirement planning and managing assets to achieve a comfortable lifestyle.  She works with clients in organizing their financial life and with client’s attorneys during the divorce process to help show the short and long-term ramifications of divorce outcomes.

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