Imagine you’ve just given a fantastic presentation to a roomful of executives. You’re pumped because you know all your preparation and rehearsal paid off. And you can tell from the energy in the room that your audience was knocked out too.

Then, as you’re shaking hands, one of the execs “compliments” you by saying they were amazed by your intelligence because given your ethnicity, it had predestined you to a life of mediocrity. That’s exactly what happened to today’s podcast guest, Cecile Munoz!

I was stunned when she shared that story with me. But, in a certain sense, I wasn’t. Anyone who’s been in financial services a couple decades is far too familiar with incidents like that. Too many pockets of our industry were boys’ clubs, and usually, the higher up the ladder you got, the whiter and more male the organization looked.

Thanks to executives like Cecile, that’s finally changing in a meaningful way. On today’s episode, Cecile talks about how her experiences as a Hispanic woman inspired her to create an executive search company that’s helping advisory firms redefine what leadership looks like, especially post-pandemic.