Last night was the first annual Aspen Women’s Wealth (AWW) Forum. Created by Ron Speaker, Founder, and CEO of Equus Private Wealth Management, AWW supports and empowers women to enhance their financial education by offering resources on AspenWomen’sWealth.com and by holding forums and discussions.
Aspen Women’s Wealth was created two years ago to provide positive messaging, encouragement, free educational resources, and connection with other women with an interest in financial empowerment. The organization was created around an ethic of safety, no products or services were pushed, only free books and resources to help empower women to be guardians of their own wealth. AWW will remain commission and incentive-free to provide unbiased opinions and resources.
Aspen Women’s Wealth wants to make some bold statements about why women need to take action. 90% of women in this room will likely be managing their affairs on their own at some point in their life. Women are generally less confident about managing financial affairs and women outlive men 2:1 past 85. So, let’s not wait to get prepared.
Personally, as an entrepreneur, and a mother with three boys, two in college, my days are spent juggling boys, work, meals, and playtime. I suppose I never thought I had anything left over to also manage our finances. Recently, I made a concentrated decision to step up and start focusing on improving our finances. I know the comfort I want for me and my family and we were not going to get there without my stepping in and making it happen. And then Ron and I began working together and he began to send books my way. Once I became focused I have become hungrier and hungrier for information.
We created this forum to provide an intimate and safe place where questions can be asked without fear of judgment to empower women to become better guardians of their wealth and to take measured risks. I helped to interview many women around town to show that so many of us have questions and concerns about our future.
Our connection to Ron was when he became an Aspen Business Connect member during our Women Empowering Women networking event series presenting female business leaders of our community helping to empower other women in business.
Jeanne Doremus has practiced law in Colorado for over 24 years and founded the Law Office of Jeanne C. Doremus, LLC in 2002. The firm specializes in trusts, estates, probate, real estate and business entities. Jeanne donates her time and participates in local non-profit organizations such as Alpine Legal Services, Inc. where she is currently the President, Room to Read, Aspen High School Booster Club, and 100+Women.
Jeanne previously served on the Aspen Child Care Board, President of the Aspen Youth Center Board, RESPONSE Board, President of the Wildwood School Board, President of the Pitkin County Bar Association, Aspen School District General Election Committee, Aspen High School Bond Election Committee, Aspen School District Asset Committee, and Aspen School District Key Communicator Committee. Jeanne C. Doremus lives with her husband, Andrew, and children in Aspen, Colorado.
Candice Carpenter Olson
Candice is an incredible entrepreneur with a successful background and she has brought her expertise to our valley with Local Coffee and Eatery and Here House which was recently selected to be part of Sonato, a curated global network of unique co-working and social clubs.
Be sure to visit her incredibly diverse bio at aspenwomenswealth.com. Candice attended Harvard Business School and then became a branding and marketing exec at American Express she also took over a tiny start-up division within Time Warner and made it a larger division, and she created iVillage, a media brand that revolutionized the use of the internet for women by providing well-organized peer discussions in finance, health, and parenting. the company went public in 1999 for over $1B. Much later, Candice learned that she and her business partner had been the first women to build a company from scratch and take it public.
Exploring a different dimension of life at Divinity School at Columbia. She published Chapters, with Simon and Schuster, on the successful navigation of life chapters. She was on the founding board that created a 3,000-student charter school network with high academic standards.
She then started a company with her husband designed to better prepare college graduates for the workplace, covering topics like finance, working in teams, and challenging conversations. In addition to Ivy League and community college students in the U.S., Fullbridge successfully trained 20,000 women in Saudi Arabia and was central to the Ministry of Education’s strategy to advance women’s opportunities.
They sold the company in 2016 and moved to Aspen full time, where Candice has worked with her daughter. Candice and Michaela have just launched a design company, Ora, which focuses on homes, hotels, stores, restaurants and other spaces where the intent is to gather people in connection, beauty and warmth..
Throughout a career that spanned a $250 a month paycheck and an IPO, Candice has had many relationships with money, some of them flawed and clueless, some inspired. She is currently completing a book called Chasing God and Money, which hopes to share hard-won wisdom on the dance between the material and spiritual, and on money’s important role in our growth—having it, not having it, spending it, investing it, losing it, and owning its care and feeding.
Ron Speaker Ron is a financial markets veteran with over 35 years of hands on money management experience. He had the early fortune to begin his career at 20 years old working under a Wall Street legend, Tom Bailey, of Janus Capital. He worked in various capacities and ultimately managed over $2 billion in mutual fund assets while achieving a top decile career performance ranking.
During his time at Janus he also managed several key private accounts for individuals creating a personal bond with his clients and interest in their evolving lives. His love for a more personal connection with clients and custom managed accounts led to the formation of his own company Equus Private Wealth in 2007 where he works only with individuals.. Ron has 36 of experience on wall st, and with all that experience he wants to give it back.
The Aspen Women’s Wealth Forum was developed as a platform to help his growing group of female clients, his wife, and friends more easily access helpful resources, receive supportive messaging around money matters and create a community of women interested in actively participating in their financial affairs.
In the past few years Ron has ordered more finance books on Amazon than most schools, and sent them to his clients and friends in hopes of making a difference and inspiring action.
Ron lives on a gentleman’s ranch with his wife, twin boys, two horses, two dogs, two cats, and six chickens.
Jeanne and Ron will cover 3 key themes to financial fitness: Estate Planning, Investments and Financial Planning. There will be a question and answer session after the conversation. If you have questions during the conversation, please raise your hand and we will try to address them. Due to the sake of time, as much as we would love to hear your financial stories, both positive and negative, we are going to use this time to only ask questions. Please feel free to email both Jeanne and Ron after to the event if you would like to continue the conversation.
Today is an introduction to AWW resources and a demonstration of the type of content we hope to continue to provide to our growing community. Follow the website and the Instagram account at Aspenwomenswealth.com or @aspenwomenswealth to stay up to date on the resources available.
This annual forum hopes to inspire, share information, address concerns and answer questions, as well as to help you all get better connected to one another,
