Chelsea Bernstein programmed the GPS that’s now setting a companywide mentoring model for women advisors at Morgan Stanley.
The mentoring project has been such a success in New York, where she is based, and the Northeast, that the firm is adapting it across the country.
Called FAME — for Female Active Mentoring Engagement — the internal mentoring program launched in 2021 and focuses on Morgan Stanley’s wealth management unit. The candidates are women, but the mentors can be either men or women, Bernstein said, and it’s designed to foster learning in both directions, so that mentors learn as much as the proteges. Despite previous attempts at Morgan Stanley, there was never an official NY-metro region mentoring program.
“I studied communications and business in college and interned at Morgan Stanley one summer,” said Bernstein, a financial advisor. “I knew I was interested in people and finance.”
The notion for a mentoring program had been in her mind for almost a decade, and when the Covid 19 pandemic and shutdown happened. Bernstein and the program’s co-founder, Emily Sax Bender, used that time to build the program.
“We wanted it to work and also be repeatable,” Bernstein said. “We’ve created a playbook to go nationally. By the end of this year, the firm will have had 100 financial advisors both mentors and mentees in three years. We’re just trying to add a layer of success to these women financial advisors.”
— Bruce Kelly