After graduating with a degree in accounting and finance from the University of Maryland on an academic scholarship, Lanta Evans-Motte discovered that she didn’t understand the many benefits that came with her job at Hewlett-Packard. “I grew up poor in a small town in Northern Florida and didn’t know anyone who knew about those things,” she said. She set out to educate herself, and soon began sharing what she learned with family, friends and community members, putting on free workshops. “I came to realize that this was what I was put on the planet to do,” she said. So, after a successful 13-year career in high tech, and with an MBA in finance, she became a financial adviser, first going to a wirehouse and then, in 2005, to the Raymond James independent channel.
She had no illusions about how difficult that would be but said being independent let her grow her business her way, which she did by cultivating centers of influence and continuing her educational workshops. “Many of my clients are caretakers and nurturers of other people, so I’m a kind of giver to givers,” she said. She has given back in other ways too, serving as a charter member and past president of the Association of African American Financial Advisors and as a member of her firm’s Black Financial Advisors Network Advisory Council. In 2003, she co-founded the nonprofit Literacy Institute for Financial Enrichment and its Youth Savings and Investment Club Program, which has educated more than 2,000 students. “I try to help people avoid major mistakes and make good decisions,” she said. “Even though I probably won’t be around to see the trees, my role is to plant the seeds.”
[More: Watch “How I Made it” video with Lanta here]
— Evan Cooper