The Financial Planning Association has elected Paul Brahim, a managing director and senior vice president at the Pittsburgh-based Wealth Enhancement Group, as its new president-elect for 2024. He will fill the role on Jan. 1, 2024, and become president in 2025.
“Paul’s leadership has been felt at all levels of the association, and his passion for financial planning is palpable,” FPA President James Lee said. “He will play an integral role in advancing the association’s many objectives, especially for the legal recognition of the term financial planner through title protection.”
Brahim will succeed Claudia Cypher Kane, an independent advisor affiliated with Raymond James, as president-elect when she takes over as president of the association in 2024. The announcement was made during the FPA’s annual conference held this week in Phoenix.
Brahim is currently wrapping up a three-year term on the association’s board of directors. At Wealth Enhancement Group, he specializes in working with c-suite executives on retirement and succession plans, as well as helping them craft employee retirement and financial wellness programs.
Brahim volunteers with several groups, including the Heritage Community Initiative and the Navy Seal Foundation, and graduated from Washington and Jefferson College.
"I am grateful for this opportunity to use my case-making, consensus-building, and decision-making skills that I have accrued over years of work in financial planning to support our members and advance our primary advocacy objective: the legal recognition of the term 'financial planner' through title protection," Brahim said.
Daniel Galli will serve as the association’s treasurer next year; he’s currently in the second year of a three-year term on the FPA Board and will head the FPA Finance Committee.
The association also elected three new members to its board, including Lisa A.K. Kirchenbauer, the founder and president of the Virginia-based Omega Wealth Management, Celeste Revelli, the director of digital planning at Fidelity Investments in Boston, and Timothy Todd, a professional of law and associate dean for faculty development and scholarship at Liberty University School of Law in Virginia.
In July 2022, the FPA announced it would pursue legal recognition of “financial planner” via title protection to distinguish them from other financial services professionals, though in an interview with WealthManagement.com Lee stressed the FPA was not trying to trademark the term or push only FPA members to use it. (An internal survey showed about eight in 10 FPA members supported the title protection push.)
Shortly after this announcement, the FPA said it would be leaving the Financial Planning Coalition (consisting of the FPA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, and the CFP Board), in part to commit itself to advocating for title protection.