Graham Hawes recently joined us full-time as our newest Research and Data Analyst after completing our internship program.
Processing and interpreting data is at the core of our investment management. It takes someone with attention to detail and the ability to research and track down abnormalities to ensure that the information we share with our clients is accurate. Graham’s work as an intern showed us that he was a great fit to keep our data integrity strong. Graham also worked with our other new hires, Colton and Darian, to complete our firm-wide data aggregation project. With his help, we were able to migrate many of our client accounts to an aggregation platform, greatly increasing our visibility of transactional data and helping us get investment results to our clients more efficiently.
I recently asked him a few questions about himself so we can share a little bit about him with our clients.
1. Why did you decide to join FSI full-time?
I always enjoyed talking about personal finance when I was younger so studying finance and working in financial services seemed like a natural fit for me. As I told Heather when I interviewed for an internship at FSI, I looked around at a few advisory firms in Raleigh and knew that if I went this route, I wanted to be at a fee-only CFP firm. Since my personality is not the pushy type, I wouldn’t feel comfortable being around advisors who provided a service that didn’t truly have a client’s interest in mind. All this goes without saying how much I enjoy the structure of operations at FSI.
2. What are you most excited about learning in your new role?
Coming in as a research and data analyst, I’m most excited about being exposed to FSI’s approach to portfolio allocation. Prior to working at FSI, I was under the impression that advisory firms allocate client portfolio’s simply based on fixed percentages between stocks and bonds so I’m surprised that FSI has such a systematic and quantitative approach to asset allocation when analyzing the market.
3. What are some of your favorite activities you enjoy with your friends and family?
My family has close friends that live on Lake Keowee in South Carolina so every opportunity we get, we go visit them. If we’re not on the lake, we’re almost always playing volleyball, homerun derby with a whiffle ball, watching football, or eating good food. Last year we started a fantasy football league between our families and my two younger sisters beat all of us. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again.
4. What’s your favorite vacation/trip you’ve taken?
My mom’s side of the family is from the Midwest so since they’re somewhat far away, we try to make a big trip to the beach every other summer. There’s about twenty of us in total so we rent out a large house and pack the vacation with activities like off-shore fishing, putt-putt, and surfing. My best memories growing up have been those vacations with all of us because I don’t get to see them very often. Next summer, we’re thinking about going to Key West, Florida.
5. Would you rather go skydiving or take a ride in a hot air balloon?
I have never done either so it’s hard to pick one. If I had the opportunity, I’d rather ride up in a hot air balloon and skydive back down to land.
Please stop by and say ‘hello’ to Graham the next time you’re around our office. We’re glad to have him onboard with us and are excited to see his career grow in the financial planning industry!
