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Employee Spotlight: Investment Operations Manager Tanya Blakely

Q: What do you do on a typical day?

A: What I do on a typical day is always different, depending on what we currently have going on in the office, or depending on what time of the quarter it is.  I guess you can say that my title wears many different hats.  What many larger firms have broken into different departments, I complete as a one-stop-shop such as new accounts, transfers, and billing.  I also handle distributions/contributions, withdrawal requests, RMDs, being our client’s personal liaison between our custodian TD Ameritrade, closing accounts, running performance, maintaining client accounts, updating client accounts, reconciliations, client gifting/stock donations, and streamlining our operations by researching new enhancements and implementations to make us the best in class.

Q: What do you like best about working at BWFA?

A: Servicing our clients. They are our number one priority. Without our clients, we would not be in business or be as successful as we are.  Coming from bigger firms, I can truly say that being in a much smaller organization allows us to be more personable with our clients. They will never call and get an operator or someone that will not call them back in a timely fashion, but instead always a friendly voice on the other end of the phone directing their call.

Q: What would our clients be surprised to know about you?

A: I think clients would be surprised to know that German was my first language.

Q: When should a client call you?

A: A client should call me if they have requests such as one-time or periodic distributions, would like to make annual contributions, deposits, RMDs, withdrawals, direct rollovers from an outside institution, including in-service rollovers, are getting divorced and need to split their accounts, want to place a stock donation, need to update beneficiaries, transfer between accounts, have any specific TD Ameritrade inquiries, or even need help logging onto the website.

Q: What is your favorite BWFA Memory?

A: My favorite BWFA memory is arriving on my first day of work at 7 a.m. (an hour-and-a-half before my start time), nearly two years ago. I was so nervous, but was quickly welcomed by my new colleagues at the office in such a gracious way.  It made me realize instantly what a strong staff I was about to be part of, and I  quickly learned what a great client base we also have.