Meeting Details

Tuesday, October 10, 2017
9:30 am - 1:30 pm (Registration opens at 9:00 am)

Topic:
 Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Wealth

Panelists:
Speaker 1:
Spencer Sherman, MBA, CFP®, Founder and Executive
Chairman, Abacus Wealth Partners
Speaker 2:
Kristen Berman, Co-Founder and Principal, Common Cents Lab
Speaker 3:
Renée M. Snow, Ph.D., EA, CFP®, Financial Planning Department Chair at UC Santa Cruz-Silicon Valley and Associate Professor at the Sofia University
Moderator:
Rick Lehman, MBA, Golden Gate University and UC Berkeley

     Thank You to Our Meeting Sponsor:

     

Program Description:
First Presentation: Mindfulness for Financial Advisors (Spencer Sherman)
A successful Financial Advisor has to work closely with their clients' goals, dreams and fears. How do we help our clients become aware of their long-term habits and behaviors? How do we successfully balance being in the present moment with listening to what our client’s are really trying to say to us, all while giving advice for the future?

In this presentation, Spencer will share techniques for incorporating mindfulness practices in your work. We'll practice these methods together as we gain a felt sense of how to produce the most impactful client interactions. The emphasis will be on participatory, experiential learning.

Second Presentation: Psychology of Money: Strategies and Perspective on How to Combat our Biases (Kirsten Berman)
Successful financial management depends less on effective ways to recalibrate portfolios and more on effective ways to build such basic human elements as confidence, trust, self-efficacy and the belief that one can reach the desired goal. Kristen will review experiments her team has done to improve financial well-being and suggest ways advisors can incorporate these principals into their work.

Join her for a lively discussion of behavioral economics, including case studies from some of the most innovative financial tech companies that Common Cents has partnered with.

Third Presentation: Mind Bending (Renée M. Snow)
Uncover how philosophy can change your mind and your practice. Learn about the meaning and purpose of money, how economy and ecology are intertwined, and how money paradigms are formed. The presentation will delve into topics such as the time and energy elements of money, the overreach of the economy, the psychology of debt and hoarding, how the Western wealth worldview was created, identification to wealth and alternative perspectives. Normative Eastern (Vedic, Buddhist, and Jain) wealth paradigms will be explored along with a discussion of how to implement these ideas in practice.

Panelists' Bios:
Spencer Sherman, MBA, CFP®, Founder and Executive Chairman, Abacus Wealth Partners
Spencer Sherman is a founding partner of Abacus Wealth Partners, a Founding B-corporation. His firm focuses on investments and services that help people transform their relationship to money and make the world a better place.
Spencer holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School. He is the author of the best selling book, The Cure for Money Madness, (Random House, 2008).

Spencer has practiced meditation since 1983 and is a qualified teacher of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Last year, he led a day-long retreat on Mindfulness for Financial Advisors at Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin County. The retreat will be offered again this coming February 2018. Mindfulness practices have been the biggest drivers of his investment and business success.      

Kristen Berman, Co-Founder and Principal, Common Cents Lab
Kristen Berman is a Co-Founder and Principal of Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative dedicated to improving the financial well-being for low to middle Americans.

Kristen also co-founded Irrational Labs, a non-profit behavioral consulting company, with Dan Ariely in 2013. Irrational Labs helps companies and nonprofits understand and leverage behavioral economics to increase the health, wealth and happiness of their users.

She was on the founding team for the behavioral economics group at Google, a group that touches over 26 teams across Google, and hosts ones of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics. She co-authored a series of workbooks called Hacking Human Nature for Good: A practical guide to changing behavior, with Dan Ariely. These workbooks are being used at companies like Google, Intuit, Neflix, Fidelity, Lending Club for business strategy and design work. She has given talks at the World Bank, Google, Facebook, Expedia

Renée M. Snow, Ph.D., EA, CFP®, Financial Planning Department Chair at UC Santa Cruz-Silicon Valley and Associate Professor at the Sofia University
Renée M. Snow, Renée Snow is an Associate Professor at the Sofia University (formerly the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) where she teaches the psychology of finance, leadership, quantitative, and advanced mixed methods research. Dr. Snow has worked as a Certified Financial Planner® for the past 24 years and has combined technical expertise with psychology and philosophy in service to her clients. She earned a M.S. in Accountancy and worked 8 years for a large regional CPA firm and is an Enrolled Agent.

Today, Dr. Snow manages her own firm and specializes in tax planning, asset management, and the psychological aspects of wealth management. As Chair of the Department as well as a financial planning instructor at the University of California Santa Cruz- Silicon Valley she grounds students in the philosophy of economics while giving them the practical tools to work in the financial services industry. The focus of Dr. Snow’s research has been an inquiry into the ancient texts of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism as they apply to financial management. Dr. Snow has published works in the areas of leadership, behavioral finance, and mindfulness.
 
Meeting Agenda
9:00 am - Registration
9:30 am - 9:45 am - Chapter Announcements & Sponsors
9:45 am - 10:30 am - Topic 1 w/ Spencer Sherman, CFP®
10:30 am - 10:40 am - Coffee Break 1
10:45 am - 11:30 am - Topic 2 w/ Kristen Berman 
11:30 am - 11:40 am - Coffee Break 2
11:45 am - 12:30 pm - Topic 3 w/ Renée Snow, PhD, CFP®, EA
12:30 p - 1:30 pm  - Panel w/ all three speakers
1:30 pm - Closing Remarks

You may still register online after October 6, 2017, however, you will be charged the Regular Registration price; online registration closes at midnight, October 8, 2017.

*This topic has been approved by the CFP Board for 3.5 hours of CE credit. 

Lisa Aliferis is the founding editor of KQED's State of Health blog. Since 2011, she's been writing stories and editing them for the site. Before taking up blogging, she toiled for many years producing health stories for television, including Dateline NBC and San Francisco's CBS affiliate, KPIX-TV. She also wrote a practical guide on the affordable care act titled Obamacare Explained – A Guide for Californians, produced by KQED News and The California Report. You can follow her on Twitter: @laliferis