By Sachin Wason

The average financial advisor in the U.S. is now about 44 years old, and more than 60% are 40 or older, according to data compiled by Retirement Living. Pair that with McKinsey's projection of a 90,000-to-110,000-advisor shortfall by 2034, and the question of who replaces today's senior advisors gets uncomfortable fast. Justin Nelson has spent years trying to close that gap from the inside, one conversation with a college student at a time.

Justin Nelson is Managing Director and Head of the Asset Management and Financial Principals Coverage Team for J.P. Morgan Private Bank, where he oversees a 20-person team advising wealthy families across New York and Connecticut. He didn't start out on this path. He earned a degree in chemistry and economics from Tufts University before an MBA at Columbia, and finance wasn't the obvious choice. "While science gave me a great mindset for solving problems, I really enjoyed finance," Nelson says.

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From Chemistry Major to Recruiting Ambassador

Nelson's own entry into the industry happened almost by accident, through friends rather than a formal pipeline. "I had a bunch of friends who were going into finance, and they helped me with the application process," he says. That kind of informal mentorship is harder to come by today, even with far more institutional support in place. "Today, Tufts offers a robust program to help students learn about finance and find amazing job opportunities. That didn't really exist in the 90's," Nelson says, reflecting on how far his alma mater's resources have come since he graduated.

He's since built a second, unofficial job around that gap. Nelson founded and leads J.P. Morgan Private Bank's undergraduate recruiting team at Tufts and sits on the Tufts Financial Network Advisory Committee, meeting with students on a near-constant basis. "I talk to a few students each week, and it's all the way from freshmen through seniors, people who are deciding, 'What's finance about?' to people who are like, 'I'm a senior, and I’m trying to figure out how to find an opportunity now,'" he says.

Hiring for Mindset, Not Major

The mentorship gap Nelson is trying to close shows up clearly in the data. Eighty-three percent of Gen Z workers say having a workplace mentor matters to their career, but just over half actually have one, according to Forbes, citing Adobe's Future Workforce Study. The same analysis found that Fortune 500 companies with mentorship programs report more than double the median profits of those without. For an industry already short on advisors, that gap is one Nelson can't afford to ignore.

His answer starts with who gets hired in the first place. "When I'm out looking to hire people, I care more about how you demonstrated an interest in finance versus your major." What he's really screening for, he says, is something harder to teach than a finance textbook. "I think that having insight into how people think and emotional connection is so important in finance."

That belief, more than any recruiting pipeline, is what Justin Nelson is betting will keep wealth management staffed with people capable of doing what he does: building relationships that last decades, not just quarters.

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