Cathie Keegan did not walk into Joanna Nash’s office looking for a job. She arrived as a client navigating family responsibility, financial planning and the question of what comes next.
For nearly a decade, Keegan had stepped away from the professional world to care for her mother. Now her mother was living in assisted care, and Keegan felt ready to return to work. She mentioned this almost in passing.
“I told Joanna, ‘I’m looking for an opportunity to go back to work,’” Keegan says. “So when you’re meeting with your clients, if you talk with anyone who’s looking for a seasoned, professional, energetic person, please mention me.”
Nash didn’t hesitate.
“And that sweet thing said, ‘I want you to come work for me,’” Keegan recalls.
Keegan’s first instinct was to push back. “But Joanna, you know I’m not a financial girl,” she told her.
Nash laughed.
“She said, ‘I don’t want you to be a financial person. I want you to do what you do best,’” Keegan says.
From client to colleague
Nash’s ability to recognize who someone already is and build from there also shaped another path, bringing Destiny Couter, now 29, from client to financial assistant at Money Mavens.
Couter’s introduction to financial planning came far earlier than most.
“I had some tragedy in my family, so I came into an inheritance at 18,” she says.
The experience reshaped how she understood money and security. Her brother, 11 years older, stepped in to help guide her, connecting her with a traditional adviser who set up a mutual fund portfolio.
For a time, it worked.
Later, Couter moved funds to secure a mortgage while working as a food server, later turning that home into a long-term rental after she and her husband purchased another. But as her life grew more complex, her relationship with her financial planner began to feel distant.
“I’d call, and I might get a call back a few days later,” she says. “Then we’d talk, and that was it.”
When the numbers feel personal
Keegan understood that feeling long before she ever considered working inside a financial firm.
“When I was single, I hated doing my finances,” she says. “So now that I’m married, I love saying, ‘Darling, I’ll bring in some money, but you take care of it.’”
That honesty now defines her work as chief brand officer at Money Mavens, where she once sat across the desk as a client.
Keegan’s relationship with Nash deepened over time. During the COVID-era market volatility, she and her husband felt the strain of watching their financial future suddenly feel fragile.
“We didn’t want to be on the rollercoaster of watching the stock market and holding our breaths,” Keegan says.
Before working with Nash, they had been clients of a large, well-known financial firm. The contrast was stark.
“I never could pick up the phone and say, ‘I have a question. We’re thinking about buying this or selling that,’” she says. “There was no connection.”
With Nash, conversations unfolded over time. Planning became progressive rather than transactional. That difference mattered most when Keegan finally confronted long-term care planning – something she had long postponed.
“I had a friend who sold long-term health care, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll get to that one day,’” she says. “Well, suddenly that day was here.”
Nash helped her and her husband evaluate options and put coverage in place.
“So now because of Joanna, if anything happens, John and I are covered with long-term care,” Keegan says.
A different doorway
Couter’s first meeting with Nash came through a different doorway: taxes.
“I was like, ‘I can’t do TurboTax and have a rental property. That’s asking for trouble,’” she says.
Nash handled the tax work and eased Couter’s anxiety. From there, the conversation widened – to an underperforming portfolio, to long-term planning, to what security might look like over decades rather than years.
“She showed me some options and I was like, ‘Let’s do that,’” Couter says.
When Couter became a mother, those conversations took on new urgency.
“My son came along and I was like, ‘OK, I think we need to start talking about how we’re going to plan for his future,’” she says.
Together, they set up what Couter describes as “a wonderful product that creates a tax-free retirement” for her family.
Making room at the table
For Couter, trust grew through clarity. She came to see that women are interested in financial matters but have often been excluded from meaningful conversations about money. The gap she observed was not driven by a lack of curiosity, but by longstanding barriers that left many women outside the financial planning process.
She describes financial meetings where attention drifted toward husbands, leaving women feeling peripheral. At Money Mavens, she says, the posture is different.
“We look them in the eye and give them information and tell them, ‘Ask questions,’” she says. “This is not intuitive to anyone. It’s just a matter of someone taking the time to educate you.”
Keegan sees the same pattern from a different vantage point.
“A lot of us don’t make a lot of money,” she says. “But what you do have, you want to be sure you protect.”
She often speaks with women who suddenly find themselves managing finances alone – after divorce, illness or loss.
“We prepare them to be ready if that happens,” she says. “So you are not suddenly starting from ground zero because you know nothing. You don’t know where your assets are or payments are. You at least know who to call.”
Putting the philosophy to work
Couter’s role at Money Mavens reflects her own early exposure to financial systems. The firm does not impose asset minimums, which allows her to work with younger clients and people just beginning to build stability.
“Most firms will have a minimum of $100,000 or more,” she says. “So the great thing about meeting, especially younger people, where they are, is that we empower them to use their greatest advantage, which is time.”
She often explains compound interest to parents planning for college. For older clients, the message adjusts.
“Late 50s still has more time than you think,” Couter says. “There are a lot of options that we can give them as well.”
Keegan’s work, meanwhile, is outward-facing. She networks, builds community relationships and tells the firm’s story in language that resonates because she once needed to hear it herself.
“Because I was a client of Joanna’s, and she earned my trust and my respect and loyalty years ago, it’s easy for me to go out and talk about the Money Mavens and what we do,” she says.
Inside the firm, that same attentiveness extends to employees. Keegan recalled a recent Monday when Nash cleared the meeting calendar, told the staff to come in wearing whatever felt comfortable, and brought in a massage therapist, with breakfast and lunch provided as part of the day.
“That’s who Joanna is,” Keegan says. “She appreciates your hard work.”
Couter, too, noticed Nash’s leadership long before she joined the firm.
“I could tell what an amazing boss Joanna was to everyone,” she says.
Built on trust
Couter already held a Life and Health Insurance License from a previous role that had not worked out. She renewed it and joined Money Mavens as a financial assistant. While working full time, she is studying for her Series 65 exam, preparing to expand her responsibilities.
Neither woman describes her role as a reinvention. Instead, both arrived with histories that shaped who they are, qualities Nash recognized as strengths to build on.
Keegan translates financial planning into conversations people can enter without fear. Couter guides clients through systems she learned to navigate early in life.
Their paths from client to colleague unfolded through trust – earned slowly, reinforced consistently and honored in the work they now do.