{"id":215093,"date":"2025-01-21T13:08:54","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T18:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/?p=215093"},"modified":"2025-01-22T09:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:15:09","slug":"alumni-spotlight-mattia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/2025\/01\/21\/alumni-spotlight-mattia\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Mattia \u201982,\u201990 MBA, PhD CFP\u00ae Gets to the Heart of Wealth Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a wealth advisor, Laura Mattia \u201982, \u201990 MBA, PhD CFP<\/span>\u00ae<\/span> is passionate about helping her clients align their financial strategies to their life goals. She is also on a mission to help more women to pursue careers in finance.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Laura Mattia \u201982, \u201990 MBA, PhD CFP<\/span>\u00ae<\/span>, senior vice president and financial advisor with Wealth Enhancement Group\u2019s Atlas Team, spoke at a Montclair workshop last October, she didn\u2019t focus on the latest stock pick or crypto strategy. She talked about values.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMoney is a tool, not an end goal,\u201d Mattia explains. \u201cIf you can identify your key values, you can identify what you do and don\u2019t want in life, and then figure out how to get there.\u00a0 Money and time are our most valuable resources. How can we use them to better our lives?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mattia didn\u2019t grow up in a wealthy household, and like so many Montclair students, she chose the University because it was an affordable option. She also didn\u2019t begin her academic journey in business and finance, opting instead for psychology and studying dance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMontclair\u2019s visual arts program was a major attraction for me,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the time I was considering a career in dance therapy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mattia put off graduate study to marry at a young age. She got a job as a customer service manager at the now defunct People Express Airlines. \u201cI enjoyed the work but was relying on marriage to provide me with financial security,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen that turned out to be untrue, a light went on. I realized that I needed to understand money.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that there were good jobs in accounting and finance, so I enrolled in Montclair\u2019s MBA program,\u201d Mattia continues. \u201cI chose the Accounting concentration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mattia\u2019s corporate career began at M&M Mars, where she served as group controller for nearly 10 years. She spent five years as CFO at Telcordia Technologies and then Geller & Company before transitioning into financial services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI started out in strategic corporate roles, but I found that I preferred working one-to-one with clients,\u201d she says. \u201cI enjoy guiding people toward decisions that will improve their lives. Financial advising can change someone\u2019s future if it is approached in a certain way. I focus on life planning, using money as a tool.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mattia earned certification in financial planning at Fairleigh Dickinson University and in 2016 completed a doctorate in personal financial planning at Texas Tech University. That same year she founded the Women\u2019s Money Empowerment Program at Women\u2019s Resource Center, a nonprofit that provides life, financial and career counseling and support for women across Florida\u2019s Manatee and Sarasota counties. She also taught personal financial planning for many years at Texas Tech as well as Rutgers University, William Paterson University, and the University of South Florida\u2019s Muma College of Business. She worked closely with the Florida Board of Governors and the CFP\u00ae<\/sup> board to create a new CFP\u00ae<\/sup> registered program at the University of South Florida. In 2018, she authored Gender on Wall Street: Uncovering Opportunities for Women in Financial Services<\/em>, in the hope of encouraging more women to seek careers in financial services. She has published academic research as well as non-scholarly articles and is quoted on a regular basis by journalists in major financial publications.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Mattia founded Atlas Fiduciary Financial LLC which recently merged with the Wealth Enhancement Group. Her passion for helping people, especially women, take charge of their finances is stronger than ever. She is a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC, MarketWatch, USA Today, Investment News, MSN, and ABC News.<\/em> She is a frequent speaker at conferences and her TEDx talk, \u201cWhy Investing in Women will Revolutionize the World,\u201d is available on YouTube. Her podcast, \u201cMoney Matriarchs,\u201d inspires women to harness the power of money to create change in their lives, families and communities.<\/p>\n

Mattia is a member of the board and co-chair of the investment committee for the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, and continues to work with <\/span>the Women\u2019s Resource Center. \u201cI provide pro bono services for women who are struggling financially, to help them get on the right track,\u201d she says. \u201cWe offer quarterly workshops on financial decision making when going through a divorce, and how to manage the financial aspects of being widowed. Divorce and widowhood are a financial wake-up call for so many women.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Mattia had to work full-time while studying at Montclair, she has many fond memories of gathering with fellow psychology and dance students. \u201cI didn\u2019t have time to join a student organization, but both departments were close-knit,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI met a lot of wonderful people who were really interested in developing themselves. We were focused on becoming better people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For several years Mattia served as a member of the University\u2019s Planned Giving Board, helping to strengthen charitable giving to her alma mater. \u201cI have had a really good life and enjoyed a lot of success because of Montclair,\u201d she points out. \u201cI want to give back and support the next generation. And it is exciting to see my alma mater thriving. Montclair clearly has become a contending university.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She especially enjoys encouraging students to stay true to what they want to achieve, while also remaining open to possibilities. \u201cIt\u2019s okay to take chances, but always remember your guardrails and keep an eye on where you really want to go,\u201d she advises.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Mattia \u201982, \u201990 MBA, PhD CFP \u00ae is on a mission to help more women to pursue careers in finance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":451,"featured_media":215104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-76_alumni-news-and-events","category-77_alumni-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215093"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215111,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215093\/revisions\/215111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}