After 32 years in wealth management, Campbell launches a program to help Black women transition into lucrative finance careers amid widespread layoffs.
Jacqueline Campbell is the founder and CEO of Alexander Legacy Private Wealth Management, which she has owned for the past five years in partnership with the Carson Group out of Omaha, Nebraska. With over three decades of experience spanning private banking, investment banking, retail banking and wealth management, Campbell has become one of the few Black women to own an investment firm. Now, she’s launching the Wealth Management Accelerator program to help Black women affected by 2025 layoffs transition into thriving finance careers.
As one of the few Black women leading a private wealth firm, what drove you to launch the Wealth Management Accelerator program?
I’ve actually been honored to own Alexander Legacy Private Wealth Management for the last five years in partnership with the Carson Group out of Omaha, Nebraska. However, I’ve been in the industry since 93, so it’s been 32 years of being in this industry, from private banking to investment banking to retail banking to wealth management to now in the independent space. One of the things that I always see when I go into these rooms is the fact that I rarely see people that look like me.
There were points of that timeline where there were more people of color, but sitting here in 2025, I’ve seen the worst numbers that I’ve seen in 32 years, which is what really prompted me, especially after knowing almost 400,000 women of color have lost their jobs just this year alone. I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines and pretend like everything was okay. So I decided to bottle up my 32 years of experience and roll out the Wealth Management Accelerator.
Tell us about this opportunity. How does it help women looking to change careers?
Right now, we’re in the midst of what they call the greatest wealth transfer in history. In the United States alone, $124 trillion will be moving from the generations ahead of us to now the Gen X, the Millennials, the Gen Zs over the next 20 years. Over the next five to seven years, there’s gonna be over 100,000 people retiring in my industry.
My industry is predominantly white male, and a lot of them are preparing for retirement. But the problem that we’ve seen in this industry is that there hasn’t really been a strong succession plan for bringing the next generation into finance. Over 50% of the industry is over 55 years old, but yet less than 30% is under 30 years old. The numbers are staggering.
When we noticed that all these Black women in particular were losing their jobs this year, almost 400,000 of them, it was like, what are we gonna do if we don’t have income? Black people contribute about $1.2 trillion in the United States to the economy, and the Black woman is taking care of so many people. She’s sometimes taking care of her parents, her siblings, her children, and she’s pulled into multiple different directions.
That was really the passion and the real desire, and I feel like the calling that I had was like, I gotta take my 32 years. It’s not just showing women financial literacy. It’s showing you how to create six, seven, in some cases, eight-figure job opportunities. In some cases, if you’re in venture capital, if you’re in private equity, if you’re in investment banking.
Those are very highly lucrative careers for very brilliant people who understand either numbers, or you can be on the other side, where you’re out building relationships and bringing clients to the table. There’s so many different ways that you can be successful in financial services, it’s just not enough Black people in the business, which is why I’m leveraging this opportunity to help upskill and reskill people in finance.
You partnered with leadership expert Christy Rutherford to develop this program. Why was it important to address both technical skills and mindset transformation?
It’s one thing to just go and get a certification and now have that skill set, but it’s another thing to be able to now go out there and apply it in a way that allows you to navigate, in some cases, the C-suite walls. In some cases, you’re navigating going out to work with Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies. There has to be a finesse and there’s a swagness of really being part of this industry. There’s that bring your authentic self to work, but then there’s also a level of finesse when it comes to being a part of the Wall Street community, being part of financial services.
The other thing that’s so key that Christy does is because a lot of the women are dealing with trauma. They’ve potentially were let go of their job in the middle of nowhere, and they weren’t really prepared, maybe they didn’t have a Plan B, so they don’t have that income coming in. We’re watching stories right now of federal workers lining up in DC to go to food banks because they’ve missed one paycheck. That’s scary. These are federal workers that were probably making six figures, but yet we’re one paycheck away from the food bank. That’s where trauma and a lot of anger comes in when you’re preparing for a second act.
Where I feel like Christy is really bringing her genius is really helping with that sort of pivot so that people can leave some of the traumatic baggage behind, because for you to be really successful in this business of money, banking and finance, you’ve got to have a laser focus. This is not gonna be for everybody, right? These are highly sensitive positions. When you’re managing billions of dollars, this is not just for somebody who doesn’t take that seriously.
These are for very mature professionals, people who really understand what it takes to get into these rooms, to have access to capital markets, to be able to do venture deals and private equity deals. That’s where Christy and I, coming together with my years of experience and her background in women empowerment and her military experience, just having that level of discipline. All of that’s necessary for us to create the type of army we’re gonna create, the new workforce, to go out and deploy to some of these Fortune 100 and 500 companies.
The program includes Series 65 license preparation, executive mindset development and mentorship. Walk us through what participants actually experience in the accelerator.
This is such a dream come true, because I’ve pulled from the best of the best and put it together in this 90-day package. Not only are you gonna get Christy Rutherford and her genius, there’s gonna be that first sort of element, that first chapter of the accelerator is really that orientation, making sure we’re laying the groundwork. You’re gonna be centered around people like Christy, a Coast Guard veteran, people like Dr. Anthony Chan, former chief economist for JPMorgan Chase.
People like Valerie Rainford, former leader of Advancing Black Strategies for JPMorgan. I’ve got people from Wells Fargo, Citigroup. Some of the top leading financial services organizations in the world that are all gonna be, at some juncture, a mentor or some type of resource for anybody coming in. You literally get access to the Rolodex of Fortune 500 geniuses that have been doing this at least 20 plus years or greater.
Then you’re gonna go through the Series 65 accelerator. That’s where we’re gonna really focus on preparing you for the exam. We’re gonna be teaching you skills and concepts and really the language of money, the language of wealth, and really helping you to break down some of those key terms. At the tail end of the accelerator, that’s when you’re actually gonna do your intensive with Kaplan.
That’s the educational program that we have selected to help produce the study materials for us to then be able to prepare you to sit for that exam. The goal is that by that 90th day, you’re setting that test date so that you can go sit for that Series 65 exam.
Upon completion and successful passing of that exam, you will be put into a talent database, where everybody that I know in the industry will know about you and know that you are now skilled, licensed and qualified, because you’ve been trained by the best of the best, and you are ready to either partner with them and join their organization, or you can take that exam and go out, and we can then continue this by showing you how to be a consultant and run your own firm.
My phone is still blowing up. I have the Oprahs of the industry calling me right now, saying, what do you need? How can we support? That’s the kind of love that people should expect coming into this program. We’re going to surround you with the resources, surround you with the people that’s gonna keep you fired up, because environmental influence is truly important, especially for those of us that are going through this whole reset.
What does success look like for the Wealth Management Accelerator? How will you measure the program’s impact?
The goal is that after the 90 days, you sit for that exam, you pass that exam. That’s KPI number one, is to actually get people to pass that exam. Taking that study time very seriously, showing up for courses, being 100% attendance, that’s gonna be key. We’re gonna be tracking those kind of things to really see who’s serious about being part of this industry.
Once we pass the exam, then the next measurement is getting that person potentially hired. Maybe they want to be the next employee at JPMorgan Chase inside of the private bank. What I do is I then socialize their bio and now their new certification and their training certificate to my friends and family over at the JPMorgan Private Bank to really get them interviewing with them, which is another great milestone checkpoint.
If they get the job, we win, because that’s the whole purpose, is to get the job, which is creating the income and creating not only just the income, but the exposure to being part of an industry that’s going to teach you about money so that you can go out and continue to develop your own wealth and help others develop wealth. I would say those are really the areas that we’re going to be measuring success. How many people pass the exam, how many people get interviews and how many people get hired?
For people interested in joining, where can they find you? What are the requirements and how can people support?
For some people, you may not necessarily want to go get a job after you go through the accelerator. Maybe you just truly want to learn more about wealth and finance and money. Or you might want to take it to enhance, if you’re already a consultant, this designation could potentially enhance you to go out and do even more work as a fiduciary of investments. It could be for children. You can be 18 years old, guys.
I’m also gonna say this could be for you to send your children, potentially, if you have 18 year olds plus out there, and get them savvy on money so that they can understand how to help steward the family wealth and be more responsible with money. We’re thinking outside the box with this accelerator. Our first goal is to create jobs, because we know how important it is to have income. But second to that is also making sure that we create habits of wealthy people so that there’s generational wealth that we’re stewarding as we’re teaching our next generation.
You can find us on www.wealthmanagementaccelerator.com. We’re gonna be doing info sessions this week on Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, where myself, along with Christy Rutherford, will walk you through a quick 30 minute what you can expect. We’re gonna do one more next Thursday as well, and then we’re off to the races because we’re ready to get our first cohort started in November.
It was so important for me to make this super affordable because people right now really need to make sure that they have access to something like this. It’s $4,997, one time payment, or you can literally split it up. We have so many options where people are splitting it up 100 bucks a month. We wanted to make it affordable. At the same time, we need to be able to sustain the program, bring in the experts and make this a true five star, Ritz Carlton experience.
Our goal was never to cheapen this, but also to make it affordable so that people do have skin in the game. This is a very savvy opportunity. No one else is doing this. I’m very blessed to be one of the first people to actually think about our sisters and to actually put something in play that’s not just about complaining about what’s going on, but really being part of the solution that’s gonna help them make some real money.
We’re looking for sponsors who want to invest in Black women because they understand the importance of keeping our sisters not only employed, but understanding money and banking. You can sponsor 10 Black women for $50,000. These 10 Black women will go on to make at least $100,000 each. So your $50,000 will turn into $500,000 of income. That is huge. We’re looking for people like that that can help us truly move this momentum forward.