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Anya Martin
Contributing Writer
Atlanta Business Chronicle
From the November 23-29, 2007 print edition
Every morning Emily Sanders rises at 5 a.m. to catch "Worldwide Exchange," a global business news broadcast aired on CNBC.
Watching helps Sanders, president and CEO of Atlanta-based Sanders Financial Management Inc., give the best advice to her clients, who she describes as emerging affluent individuals and families with assets between $300,000 and $3 million, many of whom are women, she said.
"I have a jump-start on how the European markets opened and how the Asian markets are doing," she said. "The world is such a small place now that what happens in other parts of the world impacts the U.S. stock market."
That global perspective and unique focus on women set Sanders apart from the average CPA in a profession traditionally dominated by male accountants and clients.
A key secret to Sanders' success is her highly committed leadership, targeting a key under-served demographic and defining her company's success in terms of her clients' success, said Ken Bernhardt, Regents professor of marketing at Georgia State University and a Sanders Financial Management advisory board member.
"Once she gets clients, she doesn't lose them," he said.
Sanders, who has more than 30 years of experience in accounting, founded Sanders Financial Management in 1994 and nurtured it into a nine-employee company that averages 25 percent growth in revenue annually, she said.
She also is a sought-after public speaker internationally who has been quoted in numerous publications, from The Wall Street Journal to Paris Voice.
However, Sanders, who grew up in Long Island, said she first contemplated being a French teacher, then a lawyer, before a college boyfriend convinced her to take a few business courses.
She graduated in 1975 from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in international economics, followed by a master's in business administration in accounting from New York University in 1978.
Sanders honed her global perspective after moving to Atlanta in 1979 to work first for The Coca-Cola Co. in a variety of positions that required travel around the world to Asia, Latin America and Africa; and then ultimately as assistant treasurer to BellSouth Corp., including responsibility over the telecom giant's international finance group.
However, Sanders left that successful career in the corporate world to found her own practice because she missed having a direct, positive impact on individual lives, a value embedded in her by her father, a hospital administrator, and her mother, a psychiatrist, she said.
"Oftentimes clients are sitting in the conference room in my office and talking about personal and emotional issues as related to money," she added. "I'm not a trained therapist, but I did learn a lot from how my mother helped patients with their emotional issues."
Then just as she was founding her company, she experienced what she said was "an unexpected divorce."
"That was really a wake-up call for me to help women who were going through life changes like divorce, a death in the family or even just women who chose not to be married, and help them live independently and securely throughout their lifetime."
While the financial services industry has traditionally focused on men, women often outlive their husbands thanks to longer life spans, improved health care and the fact that they are often younger than their spouses, Sanders said.
She even has earned a special certification as a registered financial gerontologist to meet the needs of aging women and those who are caretakers of elderly parents, she added.
Sanders' commitment to help people extends to serving on multiple nonprofit boards and being co-chair of the Investment Endowment Committee of the Jewish Federation of Atlanta.
Sanders has leveraged her financial skills not only to raise money but to ensure the best investment decisions are made for long-term growth, said Lynda Walker, a principal at Atlanta-based consulting group The MIH Team who met Sanders 10 years ago through community work.
"Whatever she does she approaches with a wonderful work ethic and a great commitment to make sure whatever she is doing is going to be successful," she added.
Sanders also chairs the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants' Financial Literacy Committee, which develops programs to teach financial planning to students.
Over the next five years, she said that she hopes to take her message of the importance of financial literacy and planning nationwide to women's audiences.
Executive Profile
Emily Sanders
- Current job: President, CEO and founder, Sanders Financial Management Inc.
- Previous job: Assistant treasurer, BellSouth Corp.
- Born: Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Raised: Manhasset Hills, N.Y.
- Age: 53
- Education: Bachelor's degree in international economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1975; MBA in accounting, New York University, 1978
- Family: Husband, Jon Margolis; three children: Shawn, 23; Ashley, 20; Rachel, 26
- Hobbies: Visiting art museums, international travel, reading biographies
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