Guiding Clients Through Divorce: Financial, Emotional, and Professional Strategies

Over the course of her 30+-year career, Gretchen has founded and grown more than five businesses. Her journey to success has been guided by one true passion: to help people create the life they want, even when that means challenging the status quo. As Beyond AUM's co-founder, she works with dozens of advisory teams, COIs, custodians, and technology vendors garnered a deep understanding of how the client experience impacts the bottom line and growth of an advisory firm. It also inspired a mission to see independent financial advisors serve more individuals in smarter ways – to both better reach and better address their evolving needs.

Shannon O’Toole is an executive leadership coach, talent strategist, and people person at her core. For more than 20 years, she has built a career around understanding how people work and how strong leadership helps them thrive.

Her path began at General Mills, where she was drawn into the art and science of attracting and retaining top talent. That curiosity led her into executive search during the dot-com boom and eventually into a long tenure in the financial services industry. As Chief Talent Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, Shannon helped scale the firm from 75 to 500 employees and from a single office to 40 nationwide. She redesigned performance management, built training programs, created career paths, and coached both internal teams and more than 150 independent partner firms.

Today, Shannon works with founders, executives, and emerging leaders as they navigate the complexities of team growth, feedback, hiring, succession, and leadership transitions. Her coaching is clear, people-centered, and action-oriented. She is known for asking the right questions, challenging assumptions, and helping leaders move forward with confidence. Shannon’s approach is grounded in four essentials — clarity, feedback, kindness, and action — the same qualities she believes define the best leaders.

Mary Meadows brings a diverse background to her work as a financial advisor having spent the first five years of her career as an early childhood special educator at The Bell Center for Early Intervention. During that time, Mary Meadows recognized that financial wellness has an impact on more than your bank balance. Her passion to empower directed her to pivot to a career in finance. She joined the team at Porter, White & Company, an investment banking and investment management firm serving both individual and institutional clients, and worked there from 2011 to 2020.

As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® practitioner and a CFA® Charterholder, she has both the quantitative background to analyze markets and investments and the ability to explain difficult concepts. Her B.A. in Psychology and Master of Teaching from the University of Virginia complement the financial background and balances the depth of financial knowledge with the empathy and understanding of the human spirit.