Some women exhibit a seemingly superhuman ability to juggle successful careers and solid family lives while participating in competitive sports, apparently achieving success single-handedly.

Patti Shannon, an investment advisor and partner with Calgary-based McLean & Partners Wealth Management Ltd., is one woman who fits that description. But the mother of three competitive teenagers, advisor to 115 high net-worth clients and member of the Canadian women’s national paddle tennis team (a variation of tennis played on a smaller court) is the first to admit she doesn’t work alone — at home, in the office or on the court.

“The team structure makes us what we are,” says Shannon.

Before Shannon entered the financial services industry, she obtained her bachelor of sciences degree at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, which prepared her for her first career, 15 years in the oilpatch. However, when Shannon decided to start a family, she took the opportunity to get involved with something that had always interested her.

“At university, I took all my options in business classes and was in the stock market club,” Shannon says. “I paid most of my way through school with my stock market earnings and scholarships.”

Shannon decided to make the leap from oil and gas to pooled and segregated accounts, studying hard for her first chartered financial analyst exam. However, with the birth of her third child coming just weeks before the exam, Shannon had more to worry about than remembering to bring the right kind of pencil. “I didn’t get to study much in the last 10 days,” she recalls. “My husband was there with the newborn and the examiners would time me out if I had to breast-feed her. My father was at home babysitting the other two kids.”

That experience illustrates how Shannon made the transition from oilpatch to mom to portfolio manager with the help of the people around her.

Shannon earned her CFA designation, joining McLean & Partners in 2001 and building an impressive book of business. “I came into the business as a mid-life career change,” says Shannon. “And I went from zero to $250 million in assets under administration in slightly more than five years. I’m a native Calgarian, and I couldn’t have done it if I didn’t have all my friends here.”

At home, Shannon’s house is a hub of activity. The kids are off to school and Shannon is off to the office for an 8.30 a.m. start. Everybody has their respective extracurricular activities, and dinner is on the table every night. Shannon says her three children were raised by herself, her husband and a much appreciated nanny.

At McLean & Partners, Shannon is supported by the operations department, the business development team and in-house researchers, as well as a dedicated customer service associate.

“Each partner and team work toward their own unique abilities,” says Shannon. “It really gives us the opportunity to focus on what we’re good at rather than wearing the business-development hat as well as that of portfolio manager.”

Portfolio managers such as Shannon are left to do what they do best, while operations makes sure everything is running smoothly and marketing takes care of reaching out to new clients. Shannon’s focus within the firm is maintaining the integrity of the funds and protecting the clients’ wealth.

“We’re unique in that the portfolio managers are all part of the research committee,” she says. “We don’t do all the legwork, don’t have to read the balance sheets; but we’re still involved in decision-making.”

Shannon believes this method is better for clients. The decisions are made for the benefit of clients, whom the portfolio managers know. There are no orders coming down the line, from halfway across the country, telling them how to treat their clients.

The final member of Shannon’s team is Erica Gordon, the client services associate, who takes phone calls (without voice mail) and answers client queries.

“Erica makes each client feel like the only client,” Shannon says.

McLean & Partners also looks after clients’ families. For three years, the firm has run regular seminars called Investing 101 to which it invites the teenaged offspring of clients to learn basic money-handling skills. All members of the firm take turns working with the teens.

Shannon herself has developed an event called Ladies’ Night Out. Soon after starting at McLean & Partners, she noticed that her clients were mostly male, often with female companions who didn’t attend the client/advisor meetings and didn’t get involved in the finances. The other portion of her clients were women who, either through divorce or the death of their husbands, found themselves single for the first time in many years and responsible for their own financial well-being but with little understanding of finances.

@page_break@“For a lot of women, it has never been their role to take care of the finances,” Shannon says. “Many women are terrified of running out of money. We take a cautious, conservative approach and work through future cash-flow projections so the women know how much they can reasonably spend on a monthly basis and not jeopardize their lifestyle.”

Shannon started the Ladies’ Night Out party a few years ago to get women together to share their experiences. She hopes to start an investing-for-women course soon, which would focus as much on getting women talking about their finances as on helping them choose investments.

“My vision is to have a three-part series,” says Shannon, “to give women a place in which they’re free to ask questions and won’t feel intimidated.” IE