Todd Taskey ’86 has a head for finance. Just ask his clients (one of whom, taking his advice, retired at age 33 with $6 million after working at a fast-growing company for just three years). A business major, Taskey began his career as a life insurance salesman and soon became a certified financial planner and registered investment adviser. In 1989 he started up an independent financial planning company, which he called Solutions Planning Group. The Bethesda, Maryland, firm now manages assets of $65 million. But Taskey doesn’t accept only multimillionaires as clients. It’s the personal touch his firm offers, he says, that makes it successful. For instance, he points out, "We still help our clients with life insurance, as it is very important, but it represents about 25 percent of our work." He prefers to get referrals from clients he already has, which has meant he’s been able to become a "company specialist," with many individual clients at a single organization. It’s proved to be a winning tactic. He and a client were profiled in a Newsweek story three years ago, and he was recently the subject of a cover story in Research magazine on the success of his company specialization. And of course, it hasn’t hurt that the 33-year-old client who retired as a multimillionaire keeps recommending him to her friends and former colleagues.

— Jennifer Everritt