Advisers Giving Back: Lisa Buffington

Check in on retirement plan adviser Lisa Buffington’s LinkedIn posts, and you might find on any given day an entry about teaching financial literacy to students, along with an encouraging note for others to share their stories of volunteering.

Buffington has been doing such community service for years, but over time, she has expanded her focus toward engaging peers and others in the financial services industry to do the same.

“I think there are a lot of people in financial advisement and in the retirement industry generally who want to volunteer, but they don’t know where to get started,” says Buffington, vice president, retirement services, at Marsh McLennan Agency and 2024 PLANADVISER Top Retirement Plan Adviser. “That’s why I like to point people to the programs that are out there … so if you don’t know where to go, or how to get started, we can show them to some vetted programs and how to begin.”

Financial literacy among young people is an area that Buffington, along with others in the industry and a steady drumbeat of research, have found to be sorely lacking, and potentially exacerbating concern over retirement security for future generations.

“Our industry has done so much to evolve and improve retirement outcomes for employees,” Buffington says. “However, we’d be fooling ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge the fact that we could do more …. if people could enter the workforce in a savings mindset, instead of a spending mindset, or already loaded with debt, we would be able to further build upon the outcomes from a better starting point.”

To help in that effort, Buffington is currently board chair of Capital Preparatory Schools Inc., a nonprofit charter management school organization made to provide historically disadvantaged students with college and career readiness skills, with four schools in Connecticut and New York. In addition, through her membership on the Retirement Adviser Council, or RAC, Buffington and members of RAC’s Financial Literacy Committee spearheaded FinLitFuture$. That program provides resources and guides for advisers and other key stakeholders across the retirement industry to teach financial literacy in their communities, as well as track those efforts in a national database.

“The volunteer effort doesn’t have to be viewed as solely on you,” Buffington says. “Our power and role of influence in support of this mission is to leverage the power of our personal networks.” 

Starting Out

Buffington’s initial foray into volunteering was in a charter school in Hartford, Connecticut, where her kids were also going through the school system. She organized a group of her colleagues in financial services to go to the school to teach financial education to K through 12^th graders. Buffington was impressed, she says, by the students’ engagement and interest, including many of whom were likely not getting basic budgeting and practical money skills at home or school.

She recalls one group of students who were working on a social justice project as one of their graduation requirements; after learning with Buffington, they decided to make financial literacy their project focus area.

“Through that effort, they ended up delivering financial literacy to their peers with my guidance,” she says. “That was a powerful way for them to learn, but also a way for their peers to connect to the subject.”

More recently, Buffington was part of a “stock market challenge” event organized by Junior Achievement Southwest New England with students to learn about the equity markets in an experiential, gamified way designed to engage them. There were student teams as well as adult teams—with Buffington’s team coming out on top among the adults.

“But what was even nicer is that, even though our team won, the student team crushed our portfolio return,” she says. “That was something to celebrate.”

Future Volunteers

While the volunteering and organization take time after work hours and on the weekends, Buffington says she is driven in part by her experiences working as a plan adviser and the industry’s overarching goals to get people to save.

She calls teaching financial literacy “beginning with the end in mind,” and notes that the retirement industry is focused on financial wellness services and tools for participants more than ever. But if younger people can “already be equipped” with money knowledge and skills, then those tools will work even better once they reach working age, she says.

Another key motivator for Buffington is the lack of diversity and inclusion in the financial services industry today for women and those from underserved communities.

“When you are volunteering and working with the youth, and opening their eyes to number one, having a very prosperous future, but number two, how our industry can help people like them, then they see a whole new opportunity for this industry to be a career path,” she says, noting that some of her prior students have joined financial services, along with others becoming doctors, lawyers, and many other professions.

Today, she is working to encourage her peers not just to join in volunteer efforts, but to invite team members and others into their space.

“Invest time in making it easier for others to join you in the effort,” she says. “That’s how we make the biggest impact in the most efficient way.”