Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Quad-A says wealth firms sent it more Black advisors than ever despite the DEI backlash
Quad-A drew 900 people to its 25th VISION conference, sponsored by JPMorgan Wealth Management, UBS and Wells Fargo. Its chief executive relays a view that some firms now use it as their diversity summit, so part of the growth may be spending moved out of the firms.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Quad-A chief executive Sheena Gray said member firms are sending more advisors to its events than they have ever sent before.
- Gray said attendance has grown substantially each year for about three years, and she credits a rise in the association's membership first.
- This year's conference added a first-ever case study competition with 10 student finalists, won by a Howard University sophomore.
- Edward Jones advisor and Quad-A board member Marie Taylor became the first woman to win the Spirit of the VISION Leadership Award.
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Why it matters
- decision Firms that stop hosting their own diversity summits can still give advisors development and networking by paying an outside association, keeping the program while taking it off their own calendars.
- exposure Quad-A's growth leans on a short list of large bank sponsors whose diversity budgets face political pressure, so one firm pulling back would cut its funding and its attendance together.
- capability The student program gives sponsor firms access to early-career and HBCU recruits at an event they do not have to organize or brand themselves.
Gray also passed along a less flattering explanation for the rise. "Some people say it's because they've not offered the same in their own firms, their own four walls, and so they're leveraging Quad-A as their diversity summits or a conference where their diverse advisors can get more professional development and be able to network in more rooms that look like them," she said [9]. If that account is right, part of the headcount is a transfer. A firm that drops an internal summit and sponsors an outside one keeps the training and the networking for its advisors. The event just no longer runs on the firm's own calendar under the firm's own name.
Gray's own explanation is the business case. Regardless of the politics, she said, firms and advisors are finding value in putting veterans and the largest companies in the business in a room with early-career planners and students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities [6]. "Our firms are showing up, and they're committing to supporting Quad-A," she said [4]. She also said "our corporate partners have expanded their relationships with us, albeit that we are in a season where many think that D E and I is dead" [8].
A third possibility is that the growth belongs mostly to the association. Gray credits membership first [7]. She has run Quad-A for two years and eight months [13], or 32 of the roughly 36 months of growth she describes [1].
I think the business-need case holds for the narrow claim. JPMorgan Wealth Management, UBS and Wells Fargo kept their names on the event [3], which the publisher describes as the largest in the industry focused on recruiting and developing Black professionals, during a political backlash against diversity efforts [2]. The broader claim, that these firms are spending more on Black advisors, is not established. The report does not give sponsorship amounts or the number of advisors each firm sent. More advisors at an outside conference fits a larger total commitment. It fits a smaller one just as well if in-house summits were cut at the same time.
Two findings would settle it. If the sponsoring firms still run their own diversity summits alongside Quad-A, the transfer reading fails and the business case gets stronger. If sponsorship dollars fell while attendance climbed to 900 [1], the firms are buying the same result for less.
The award rosters show how close the sponsors sit to the association. Wells Fargo's Barry Simmons won its leadership award in 2024 [14]. This year UBS's head of sports and entertainment, former NFL player Wale Ogunleye, was one of 10 people named Leaders to Watch in Wealth [12].
What to watch
- The 2027 VISION conference, which Gray discussed in the interview: whether JPMorgan Wealth Management, UBS and Wells Fargo return as sponsors and whether other firms join them.
- Whether any of the 10 case-competition finalists, including the Howard sophomore who won, take internships or jobs at the sponsoring firms.