His pre-med academic training and first job at a pharmaceutical company are long in the past. “But to this day, I have a keener sense of how to guide clients from a health perspective,” said Stuart Armstrong, whose background and insurance planning skills have served clients seeking planning help in their battles with AIDS and with other issues of particular concern to members of the LGBTQ community. Armstrong, who resides near Boston, started his advisory career at John Hancock, where his interviewer said they wanted him to market to the gay community.
“That was 1985 and I hadn’t come out to him, but the fact they would hire me to market to other gay people was unheard of,” he said. Soon afterward, Armstrong developed and ran more than 30 AIDS awareness workshops designed to help people stricken with the disease put their financial house in order; he also provided pro bono estate planning advice. A director of PridePlanners for 14 years, he helped merge the group into the Financial Planning Association, where he served as a board member for three years and now works to bring more people of color into financial planning. Armstrong, who resides near Boston, says his volunteer efforts have been demanding, but “they feed my soul.”
— Evan Cooper