Kathy Tully '76, Marketing, '80, Master's in Business Administration
Senior Vice President, Morgan Stanley

	“My goal is twofold. I want to help my clients make unemotional, well-educated financial decisions,” she says, “and I want to provide them with the most exceptional service available.”

How many people invite their financial advisor to their birthday, wedding and anniversary celebrations? How many financial advisors personally call clients on their birthdays just to wish them many happy returns of the day?

In the world of stocks, bonds and megabuck investments, personal relationships are not the norm. Most people invest the words “stockbroker” and “retirement planning specialist” with a sense of distance and awe. If, however, you are fortunate enough to have Cal Poly Pomona alumna Kathy Tully as your wealth advisor, you will not only have a solidly constructed financial portfolio, but you will also have a charismatic friend.

“The more I know about the dayto- day lives of my clients, the better I can take care of them,” says Tully.“Has a grandchild just been born? Is someone about to marry, relocate or retire? This is important information that informs current and future financial decisions.”

Don’t underestimate her magnetic congeniality. Tully’s personal approach to financial advising has put her at the forefront of her profession. A senior vice president at Morgan Stanley who has been named one of the top 100 women financial advisors in the country by Barron’s, the Dow Jones business and financial weekly, she has also been named to Morgan Stanley’s rarefied Chairman’s Club. To understand the “wow factor” of this achievement, note that those in the Director’s Club are the top advisors in a particular region while those in the President’s Club are among the top 500 advisors in the nation. Only the top one percent of Morgan Stanley advisors is named to the Chairman’s Club, a feat accomplished by Tully for the past 12 years.

“My goal is twofold. I want to help my clients make unemotional, well-educated financial decisions,” she says, “and I want to provide them with the most exceptional service available.”

Investors, she adds, can be skittish. The media is not only full of fly-by-night get rich schemes, it is also full of distressing information that can drive even the calmest client into hysteria. E verything everywhere affects the investment world; therefore, the best wealth advisors and retirement financial planners keep themselves very well informed on current events. Tully advises clients to look at the long term rather than the short term in regard to investments. A savvy financial advisor is already functioning six months ahead of the current events broadcast on the evening news. W hen the stock market took a dive in 2000, Tully’s clients came out of it very well indeed, a fact that was noted by her clients’ CPAs.

“I really knew I had arrived when CPAs began to refer their own mothers to me,” says Tully, who earned an MBA in 1980 following her bachelor’s in marketing management in 1976 from Cal Poly Pomona.

Tully became aware of the power of financial planning at a young age. Born into an Air Force family, she is one of six siblings. Her father always said, “Save now, spend later,” advice that Tully took to heart, understanding that it wasn’t enough to simply save, but she must also protect and invest her savings. She worked her way through Cal Poly Pomona as a Kelly Girl in the food industry, which set in motion her first career as a sales representative for Del Monte Foods where she was assigned the two largest areas in the country — Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Tully moved up the ladder to sales manager, but found herself increasingly drawn to investment and financial planning. To optimize her savings, she began taking night classes at a local investment firm, and it was there that she found her true calling.

“People always ask me how I got started in the financial advising business,”
she says, “and I have to tell them that I sold green beans for eight years.”

Green beans aside, the real question is “When should we seek financial advice?” Technically, financial planning should begin on the first day of the first job, but clients need different levels of advice at different times in their lives. Tully became expert in retirement planning and 401K rollovers during a spate of downsizing and layoffs in the Inland Empire. At the same time, she cultivated relationships not only with each specific client but also with that client’s own CPA and lawyer. In this way, Tully could compile the information necessary to help each client maximize his or her nest egg. Her practical approach is both reassuring and effective.

“I advise my clients based on common sense,” she says. “If they need an immediate return on an investment, it wouldn’t be prudent to seek that kind of return from a long-term investment such as a rental property. A fter all, doctors don’t prescribe cough syrup for sprained ankles.”

She may have a high-powered and hectic job, but Tully still finds time to make a difference in the community. She is chair of the San Antonio Hospital Foundation Board and also serves on Cal Poly Pomona’s University Educational Trust Board. In addition, Tully frequently mentors entry-level financial advisors at Morgan Stanley, demonstrating her personal approach to client relationships.

There again, she epitomizes the term “personal finance.”