March 16, 2020 BARRON’S S11
AMERICA’S TOP 1200 FINANCIAL ADVISORS 2020
Early in her wealth advisory career,Jana Shoulders
came face-to-face with a particularly tough client—her
father.
An Oklahoma rancher and world-champion rodeo
rider, Jim Shoulders equated wealth solely with land. He
balked at investing in any assets other than “dirt and
things with four hooves,” says his daughter, who wanted
him to diversify his holdings and gain liquidity.
The solution was “putting myself in his boots, learn-
ing what was his comfort level and what it was going to
take to help him understand and evolve at the right pace
into investing in something else,” she says.
That experience taught Shoulders an invaluable
lesson. “I really focus on spending a lot of my energy
understanding where [clients] are coming from, what’s
important to them, what’s the fabric of their life,” says
Shoulders, now managing director of the Oklahoma
office of Mariner Wealth Advisors.
Shoulders’ Oklahoma operation now boasts $2 billion
of assets under management. She heads two offices, one
in Tulsa and the other in Oklahoma City, with a staff
that totals about 70.
Shoulders, 63, was a practicing Certified Public Ac-
countant in Tulsa for 19 years focusing on taxes before
she started her RIA practice in 1996, founding a firm
she called Adams Hall Asset Management. She called
her evolving role “financial life management.” The
Mariner group acquired a majority stake in early 2012.
Because Shoulders’ practice is centered on Okla-
homa, many of her clients have significant investments
in energy, which has been hit hard. Such cycles are
nothing new, but because the clients are “moving into
the next phase of their lives,” she says, it’s necessary to
talk through comfort levels and an investing transition.
She’s telling clients that the recent market shocks are
“transitory,” not a market top. “We are optimistic that
the second half of the year is going to be positive in spite
of the challenges we have in the energy patch,” she says.
And her father, who died in 2007?
“The last five to seven years of his life, we were able
to accumulate a really nice investment portfolio,” Shoul-
ders says. “He was so grateful.”—M.M.
ByBARRETT EMKE$2B $3M $9M
Total Assets Typical Account Typical Net Worth
Tulsa, Okla. No. 6
JANA
SHOULDERS
Mariner Wealth Advisors
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