The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards announced its Board of Directors has elected three new members: Marguerita Cheng and Richard Shaw, both CFPs, and Steve Wallman, an accomplished fintech innovator.
The Board of Directors is the policymaking and oversight body of CFP Board and acts on behalf of the public, CFP professionals and other stakeholders.
“We are excited to have these three talented and accomplished individuals join the Board of Directors,” said CFP Board chair-elect Dan Moisand. “Rita, Richard and Steve bring diverse perspectives and insights to the Board, and I look forward to working with them to benefit the public and uphold CFP certification as the recognized standard of excellence for competent and ethical financial planning.”
In 2022, the Board’s Nominating Committee conducted a gap analysis and identified three recruitment priorities “to ensure that the Board has the diversity of experience, viewpoints and representation necessary for good governance” in the coming year, including a client-facing practitioner, a representative of a national trust company, and someone with expertise in fintech or digital assets.
The committee also considered candidates who would bring more diversity to the Board. After conducting a “comprehensive analysis,” the Board elected Cheng, Shaw and Wallman.
Marguerita (Rita) Cheng is founder and CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth in Maryland. Prior to starting Blue Ocean, Cheng was a financial advisor at Ameriprise Financial and an analyst and editor at Towa Securities in Tokyo. A longtime volunteer at the CFP Board, Cheng is a founding member of the Board’s Diversity Advisory Group, has served on the Planning Committee of the Center for Financial Planning’s Diversity Summit each year since its inception and has served as a CFP Board Ambassador since 2012.
Cheng, who earned her CFP certification in 2004, has also served on the Financial Planning Association Board of Directors and is a past president of the FPA of the National Capital Area.
Richard Shaw is principal and senior client advisor at Bessemer Trust, an NYC-based multifamily office that has been around for more than 110 years. Shaw serves as chair of the Organization Investment Committee of the Teatown Lake Reservation Nature Preserve and Education Center, helping to manage their endowment assets. He is also the past chair of Harlem Commonwealth Council, whose mission is to stimulate economic development through the creation of enterprises, the generation of jobs, the support of business and the education of its residents.
Shaw is a CFP professional, as well as a Certified Trust and Fiduciary Advisor, an Honor Graduate of the Cannon Trust School and a member of the Financial Planning Association of Metro New York and the Estate Planning Council of New York City.
Steve Wallman served as SEC commissioner from 1994 to 1997, after being nominated by Bill Clinton. Prior to the SEC, he was a corporate partner at Covington & Burling, where he crafted the first state law explicitly allowing corporate boards to consider the interests of other stakeholders, such as employees, customers and the community, in taking corporate action, thereby providing the foundation for ESG investing.
Wallman, who has approximately 20 patents to his name, subsequently founded fintech company Folio Financial Inc. (acquired in 2020 by Goldman Sachs), the first platform to allow investors and advisors to create direct-indexed and personalized portfolios using fractional shares. He also created Proxy Governance, which provided automated corporate governance–related voting services for institutional investors, and ViaFolio, which offered a private capital-raising platform for small companies.
On Dec. 31, 2022, the terms of current Board Chair Kamila Elliott, Ron Green, Latha Ramchand and Natalie Wolfsen will expire. On January 1, Moisand will take the helm as Board chair and Matthew Boersen will become Board chair-elect.
“We would like to give our heartfelt thanks to Kamila, Ron, Latha and Natalie for serving on the Board of Directors,” said Moisand. “They have certainly made an impact, and we appreciate their leadership and dedication while working on behalf of CFP Board and CFP professionals.”
The new Board members’ three-year terms begin Jan. 1, 2023, and end on Dec. 31, 2025. This year’s class will be the second Board class eligible to be reelected by the Board for a second three-year term. With the three new members elected this month, the Board in 2023 will comprise 15 voting members (10 CFP professionals and five non-CFP professionals—three of whom are public members). CFP Board CEO Kevin R. Keller will continue as a nonvoting member, bringing the total number of Board members to 16.