Rianka spoke with Raymond James' Aspire Magazine about her journey as a financial planner and entrepreneur for their Fall 2020 issue.
As a Black woman advisor in her early 30s, Rianka R. Dorsainvil knows more than a thing or two about overcoming challenges.
Growing up in Norfolk, Virginia, she was introduced to a wide array of ethnicities and religions from a young age. It wasn’t until she started attending college at Virginia Tech that she realized not every place was as diverse as her community.
“When I went to college, I had to – for the first time in my life – experience being the only person of color in the room,” she says. “That was extremely challenging, but those years helped build the confidence I needed to navigate the world of finance. I got used to being the only one in the room – the only one who was a millennial, or a woman, or a person of color.”
Originally a math major, Dorsainvil first considered becoming an advisor during her junior year at Virginia Tech. “I took an elective called Personal Finance 101. That’s when I learned about things like credit scores, credit reports, Social Security – tangible topics that I could apply to my own life.”
After speaking to her professor, Dorsainvil discovered that her college offered a CFP Board-registered program in financial planning. “That’s how I found out about personal finance,” she says. “But my love of personal finance came from knowing that I could help people with what I was learning.”