Alyssa Phillips is Vice President in Wealth Management
Alyssa Phillips is Vice President, Operations at Centura Wealth Advisory an Executive-Level leader at a wealth management firm in Del Mar, CA.
At 36, she’s had quite an unconventional career trajectory that started with an entrepreneurial spirit in her youth and as an adult, was fortified at the meeting of opportunity and instinct.
Born and raised in Los Angeles in a large, blended Latino family, Alyssa was the second youngest of eight children. She and her younger brother were the remaining siblings at home towards the height of their mother’s struggles with addiction and at the end of their parent’s marriage.
When Alyssa was in high school, her parents officially separated, and she and her brother moved out of their family house and into an apartment with their father. Despite being one of the youngest in the family, here, Alyssa was very much in charge. Her father worked long hours at the LA County Sheriff’s Department, so she took on the role of caring for her brother and managing the household as a whole.
She kept everything running, from the laundry to the meals, and her brother’s schooling, unintentionally and out of necessity, building the organizational and managerial skills integral to her eventual career path. She regularly helped her brother and his friend with their homework, which turned into a small tutoring business when the friend’s parents found out and wanted to pay her for her efforts. Alyssa was pulling in $12/hour, quite the profit for a thirteen-year-old in 1998. She was eager to handle her money wisely, so with almost a thousand dollars saved up in a shoebox, she ventured to Bank of America. “They asked, where are your parents and where did this money come from?” After some persuasive explanation, the agents agreed to set Alyssa up with an account.
Despite her rocky home life, Alyssa excelled at school. She was an athlete, and a singer and had stellar grades. “I always strived to be the favorite kid, maybe I was looking for a little bit of that adult attention and approval that I wasn’t really getting home.”
But Alyssa was also adept at compartmentalizing her feelings and trudging ahead to take care of what she needed to do for herself and her brother. She had never shared her home situation with another adult before. And she had never learned how to express her feelings beyond anger.
A chance encounter with the Assistant Principal of Guidance, Margie Moriarty, knocked the walls down for Alyssa. One day she was called to Ms. Moriarty’s office. There was a house party Alyssa had attended, and an incident occurred after she left. Parents were upset and
contacted the school for support. The school administration sought out Alyssa, hoping the honors student would be willing to share, but Alyssa genuinely didn’t know anything.
With this dead-end, Ms. Moriarty took the opportunity to ask how Alyssa was doing and what her home life was like. Alyssa instinctively deflected and shifted the conversation back to school. Ms. Moriarty took note, seeing through the facade and identifying a need in Alyssa for direct support.
A couple of days after their initial meeting, Ms. Moriarty called Alyssa back into her office to “just check in.” Alyssa reluctantly complied, brushing off the value of their time together, except for the fact it allowed her to skip out on Algebra II. She danced around her real issues for some time until one session, she arrived after a particularly tumultuous morning at home. Alyssa broke down crying, telling Ms. Moriarty everything. “I was in her office probably until about 7:00 pm. She canceled her day…She ordered lunch for us; she ordered dinner for us…we were in her office for about 12 hours easily.”
The trust Ms. Moriarty had built up was unmatched by anything Alyssa had experienced from another adult before, which set the foundation for the absolute tidal wave of emotional breakthrough. And it only grew from there. They set weekly meetings where Alyssa could practice expressing her feelings and had a soundboard to help navigate any challenge. They’ve maintained a relationship and to this day, Alyssa takes her out every year on Mother’s Day. “And I still can’t call her Margie. I call her Ms. Moriarty – I’m 36. But I just can’t do it.”
And Ms. Moriarty was the one to convince Alyssa to go to college, to realize the degree of her academic potential, and to view education as a way out of her family situation. “I didn’t have that before. Partially growing up in an underrepresented neighborhood where they really weren’t doing college fairs back then.”
Alyssa landed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), intent on staying close to home for her brother. She majored in English, as she had always loved the escapism that reading and writing provided. She continued her tutoring efforts with local high schools, keen to help grow the academic support available to the next generation. She also took meticulous notes, which the Office of Students with Disabilities paid her for, while her friends popped $50 for Alyssa to organize their syllabi into a customized calendar to help them stay on top of their workloads.
As Alyssa thought ahead for her career, she knew she wanted financial stability, and as a confident and opinionated kid, she was often told by adults she should be a lawyer. The idea
stuck. UCLA didn’t have a pre-law track, but they did offer a course designed to evaluate legal case studies, and it covered the cost of LSAT test prep. Alyssa scored well and figured law school was surely the natural next step.
She graduated a year early from UCLA and went straight to Loyola Law School. Alyssa enjoyed the intense rigor of the program, something she had yet to experience in school; law school is where she had to truly study for the first time.
Loyola regularly invited attorneys and judges as guest speakers, an opportunity Alyssa was eager to take advantage of. “As I was listening to them, I thought, wait for a second, the lifestyle of being an attorney does not sound like what I want to do…and your life is not your own.”
Despite her love of the program and the people, Alyssa needed time to reconsider her options and took a gap year, and she never returned. Looking back, she wouldn’t have accelerated her undergrad experience at UCLA, instead taking the opportunity to study abroad and not been in such a rush to get to the next stage in her life.
During her gap year, she leaned into her long-held interest in the business. Growing up, though, she didn’t even conceive of business as a career path for herself, despite turning a profit tutoring at thirteen and organizing academic materials in undergrad. While this was on her mind, a friend from UCLA reached out to her – he had been drafted into the NBA and wanted to start a foundation and host a summer basketball camp for youth – and he wanted Alyssa to run it.
Alyssa was game but had to figure out every single piece along the way, something she had been all too familiar with since childhood. She researched how to start a 501(c)(3) foundation and figured out through trial and error how to run an effective basketball camp, how to fundraise, and how to make the camp accessible to varying economic needs. She partnered with UCLA to use their facilities, and the camp would run for nine years, becoming more robust with each summer.
With her gap year spent fully dedicated to the foundation and thus solidifying her interest in business, she enrolled in the MBA program at California State University, Long Beach. Alyssa’s NBA friend’s wealth manager also recruited her to work for him at his firm running marketing and events. This kickstarted her track into wealth management. Alyssa worked there full-time for two years while attending her MBA courses at night and running the camp in the summers. It was an exhausting period in her life, as she spent most of her time working, at school, or in traffic. “When people ask, ‘you were working full-time and did your MBA full-time, do you recommend it? I say, absolutely not. But if you’re driven and willing to sacrifice a couple of years of social normalcy, then this is a great way to expedite the process.” And that is what Alyssa was willing to do.
She enjoyed the variety that the world of business offered, having to balance multiple projects at once and keep everything running efficiently. Alyssa received her MBA in 2012, at 26, and continued to work at the wealth management firm after graduation, shifting her responsibilities to organizing and refining the company’s processes.
The following year, Alyssa’s basketball friend invested in an e-cigarette company – his grandfather had passed away from lung cancer, so he was drawn to smoking cessation movements – and once again, he wanted Alyssa at the helm. “I didn’t even know what the heck e-cigarettes were back then… but you don’t say no to an opportunity like that.”
This time, with her MBA in hand and several years of professional work, Alyssa felt greater confidence in accepting the offer. Still, as with any startup, it was a major learning curve. Alyssa was deemed Director of Operations and led the small team as they worked, unromantically, out of a garage. She leveraged her MBA and scoured the internet to continue learning everything she could. As she grew the company, she oversaw both domestic and international supply chains, and they eventually moved into a real office space.
Alyssa quickly recognized the limits of their product, however, both in the cost and lack of efficacy. The true vertical, she knew, was in the CBD market – a long-existing, well-researched product with known medicinal benefits. “I’m not a big risk-taker…and I saw the e-cigarette brand as a risky thing versus a CBD brand as not only less risky, but also more profitable with years of research to back it up – pivoting was a no-brainer.” With this switch in focus, the company soared, reaching eighteen million dollars in revenue within the first four years.
By the end of her tenure, Alyssa had personally hired all 35 staff and developed her own unique approach to the hiring process. She wanted to know, above all, what motivated a person. “I tried to understand the candidate’s point of view…and thought about what things would be important to me if I was looking for a new job, and then I would just ask them questions about that to try to bring the conversation there… My goal with candidates is always to be very clear about what the job is and what it isn’t and to try to suss out whether or not that aligns with who they are and what they are looking for…my goal is not (necessarily) to get them to say yes.”
This time, with her MBA in hand and several years of professional work, Alyssa felt greater confidence in accepting the offer. Still, as with any startup, it was a major learning curve. Alyssa was deemed Director of Operations and led the small team as they worked, unromantically, out of a garage. She leveraged her MBA and scoured the internet to continue learning everything she could. As she grew the company, she oversaw both domestic and international supply chains, and they eventually moved into a real office space.
Alyssa quickly recognized the limits of their product, however, both in the cost and lack of efficacy. The true vertical, she knew, was in the CBD market – a long-existing, well-researched product with known medicinal benefits. “I’m not a big risk-taker…and I saw the e-cigarette brand as a risky thing versus a CBD brand as not only less risky, but also more profitable with years of research to back it up – pivoting was a no-brainer.” With this switch in focus, the company soared, reaching eighteen million dollars in revenue within the first four years.
By the end of her tenure, Alyssa had personally hired all 35 staff and developed her own unique approach to the hiring process. She wanted to know, above all, what motivated a person. “I tried to understand the candidate’s point of view…and thought about what things would be important to me if I was looking for a new job, and then I would just ask them questions about that to try to bring the conversation there… My goal with candidates is always to be very clear about what the job is and what it isn’t and to try to suss out whether or not that aligns with who they are and what they are looking for…my goal is not (necessarily) to get them to say yes.”
After four years of running the show, Alyssa knew it was nearing time to leave. She was exhausted by the constant fires she had to put out, from conflicting decisions by other partners, and from the overall toll of startup life. “I got burned out because I would sacrifice myself.” She felt immense pressure to succeed for her friend and for her employees, but she learned the hard way that there is a natural limit to what one can do and doing it all is impossible. A fainting spell at the office one day served as an urgent wake-up call for something to change, for her to set boundaries and care for her own needs.
An opportunity for change also meant a return to the familiar. Outside of the startup, Alyssa maintained a working relationship with her boss from the wealth management firm, for whom she continued to plan one-off events over the years. They got to chat on one occasion, and Alyssa shared her most current ventures at the startup, centralizing and integrating their technology systems. Her old boss knew he needed that level of organization and efficiency at this office; he knew he needed Alyssa back. “So I said, if you’re serious, send me something in writing via email…I totally laughed it off. Two or three days later, boom. Job offer.”
So Alyssa found herself at the wealth management firm once again. She started with technology, but as she got underway, she unearthed bigger problems in the company’s overall processes and infrastructure. Alyssa eventually moved away from technology and into operations, most recently serving as the Chief Operating Officer.
As she dove deeper, she realized there was a ceiling to how much the company could grow, despite lofty goals. The top managers weren’t able to replicate their specific skill sets in others, let alone have the capacity for basic supervisory support. Alyssa went on to manage several teams to keep the goals aligned and provide the support necessary for individuals to succeed.
It wasn’t an easy overhaul to sell, to ask the company to change the core functions that provided them a certain level of success up to that point. Alyssa approached it with a clear understanding of their needs while highlighting the logic of her plan. “I think being an English major was advantageous because the first rule of writing is to know your audience. You have to understand their perspective, so you can deliver your message in a way that is going to resonate.” Echoes, as well, of her tutoring beginnings. She got to work unraveling and resetting the norms in communication, staff management, and care of clients.
She stayed for five years in this capacity before deciding it was time for something new again. “I realized that I had taken the firm as far as they were comfortable going, and that’s okay.” And in talking with a female friend in a similar role, who had spoken to a recruiter, Alyssa realized they were being paid significantly less than the market rate for their positions. On top of that, was a verbal handshake by her firm for an early salary bump that never came to fruition; she had put trust in their word, given the long-standing relationship.
Alyssa approached the partners to negotiate a fair market rate; she could be reasonably patient with the timeline if there was a clear path forward but she held that she would no longer manage six departments at a discount.
The attempt was a bust. Alyssa now found herself in a unique position, trying to find a job for the first time rather than the job finding her. She connected with colleagues from the advisory board she sat on at TD Ameritrade, who directed her to search for a recruiter who specialized in operations placements in financial services.
In 2021, a recruiter connected Alyssa to her very first interview as a candidate. It was an intensive process consisting of close to twenty interviews, a personality assessment, and a meeting with their business coach. She learned the environment of this company mimicked that of startup culture (working 24/7 without balanced boundaries), which Alyssa was determined not to return to, and so was content to hold out for the right opportunity.
It took a year and a half, but Alyssa landed at another wealth management firm recently, with a salary to match the market. The hybrid office allows her to maintain a balanced schedule, something she has learned to prioritize in her life, having seen her health take a toll over the years.
Since childhood, Alyssa has been managing everything thrown at her, identifying problems, and finding solutions. It’s gotten her far, even though it hasn’t always been fair. Now, she is in a place where she can truly center her needs. “It’s okay not to put your job and everyone else ahead of you…the world will keep spinning, people will still love you, as you will still be a great employee. You can do all of these things very well without sacrificing yourself.”