Jacquelyn Nguyen – Morgan Stanley Wealth Advisory Associate

_MG_0196 Huong N's Wedding, 09212012, Maui HIMorgan Stanley, a multinational financial services corporation, hosts more than 60,000 of the brightest, most motivated employees in 42 countries with over 1300 offices worldwide. It has been a privilege to intern at Morgan Stanly Wealth Management in Downtown Seattle since my junior year at UW.  Having been recruited on the spot at an award ceremony event, hosted by the Foster Consulting & Business Development Center in the Winter of 2012, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best financial advisors in the state of Washington since. The best thing about my internship at Morgan Stanley is that I am never limited to just one specific role. I started out as marketing intern and quickly evolved into a business development and wealth management intern as well within a matter of weeks.

Having to uphold all three roles has been both a challenge and reward – just the way I like it. My marketing role entails creating and assembling marketing materials for financial advisors to use at crucial initial prospectus meetings. In the business development sector, I interact closely with a financial advisor (my manager) in developing consistent revenue generating strategies to grow his book of business. This requires critical thinking to identify which areas of our business can be strengthened in order to make and exceed quarterly asset targets. For example, over the last several months I was in charge of managing a mortgage and long-term care campaign to make sure that each of the 150+ clients we serve have had their needs covered in those areas. In leading that project, I was able to generate gross revenues for my advisory team.

There are endless opportunities to learn and engage in various work areas ranging from account management to comprehensive financial planning. My experience with the Foster Business Impact Group’s consulting program has provided me with the necessary skills to be successful during client engagements at Morgan Stanley. Taking what I gathered from those engagements, I was able to profile clients and identify their needs and financial goals, thus helping me to set up their comprehensive financial plans that would predict their retirement success probabilities.

Coming into the internship, I didn’t know what to expect. I had a faint idea on what wealth advisors do, generally pertaining to managing investment strategies and trading only, but after interning at Morgan Stanley for over a year, I have come to realize that wealth advisory is more than investments and managing assets. It’s about creating long-term value for the client and in that, a wealth advisor’s role is to implement proper levels of risk management to make sure the client is safe in a volatile market. This has become more apparent to me in recent months as I considered my future at Morgan Stanley. At the end of 2013, I was offered a full-time position in Morgan Stanley’s wealth advisory associate (WAA) program where I will be working with other advisory teams to create financial plans for their clients as well as develop their business practice. In that program I will also have to continuously focus on business development so that when I transition out of the program into a financial advisory associate role, I will have my own book of business to cultivate and manage.

All in all, my experience at Morgan Stanley has been highly valuable in my professional development. I thoroughly look forward to my career there and I couldn’t have asked for a better internship experience which will continue until the day I graduate this coming June.

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