Black financial advisers are rare, Black wholesalers rarer still.
So as a leader and advocate for those essential product marketers through the Association for Wholesaling Diversity, which he founded in 2016, Marlōn Hall is as unique as his name (pronounced mar-lone, French for “little hawk”). His route to a successful career in this relatively obscure corner of the business is equally singular.
Raised by a single mother in a tough South Side Chicago neighborhood, Hall moved to Laramie, Wyoming, which his wife discovered on vacations out West. Taking a job as a carpenter, a skill he developed after dropping out of an elite high school at the time his mother died, he endured overt discrimination and decided to earn his equivalency diploma and go to college.
After graduating, he got a job as a bank teller, where his manager suggested he take training courses that led to earning securities licenses and being called on by wholesalers. Coming to understand their job, Hall applied to Jackson Financial and became an internal wholesaler in Denver in 2008. He joined the field force in 2010 and was promoted to team leader of five wholesalers in 2020.
In his travels, Hall met other Black wholesalers who, like him, often felt isolated. To provide a place to share their experiences and help each other, and to raise awareness among African Americans nationally about careers in financial services, he formed AWD.
“People well up when talking about their experiences and realizing they are not alone,” Hall said, “I thought that might happen once or twice, but it happens often.”