Former athlete’s drive fuels wealth-management career

DRIVEN: Karen Emma, president of Universal Wealth Management in Cranston, speaks with financial adviser  Greg Voccio. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
DRIVEN: Karen Emma, president of Universal Wealth Management in Cranston, speaks with financial adviser Greg Voccio. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

The same drive and competitiveness that helped Karen Emma become a top college athlete has led her to build a growing wealth-management business.

After eight years as a successful financial adviser at Smith Barney, Emma founded Universal Wealth Management in Providence on the concept that a successful financial portfolio is critical, but not the only key to wealth management in the 21st century.

“Increased longevity has changed everything,” Emma said. “The rising costs and complexity of health care and lengthy retirement have created turmoil in every household in the United States. We are seeing a generational crisis. Our aging baby boomers and the generations that follow never really anticipated the cash flow that they need year after year, and particularly in retirement if they live to be 100 – a rapidly coming benchmark. I know this firsthand. My own grandmother is 96.

“We used to believe with good reason that a successful financial portfolio would overcome all obstacles. But now that is just not the case; rising expenses of health care and numerous other cash drains and planning errors can easily overwhelm a sound financial portfolio.”

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Universal, under Emma’s direction as president, addresses for its clients the complex factors in their lives, led by health care, that if improperly planned can result in outliving one’s money. These include such matters as Social Security, health accounts, IRAs, taxes, homeownership, credit card debt, special obligations, family problems and insurance.

Emma, 41, joined Smith Barney’s Providence office when she was 24 in 1999, as one of the few women who were financial advisers at that time. She resigned to open Universal in 2007 with one associate financial adviser, Robbie Mann, whom she describes as her mentor.

Since then the Universal staff has expanded to eight and this fall moved to new offices in a totally refurbished building at 945 Reservoir Ave. in Cranston – a city where Emma has lived all her life.

“The continuing success of our business obviously necessitated our search for more office space than we had at our Clifford Street address,” Emma said. “After a thorough study of commercial real estate in the Providence area, we found a great, cost-effective opportunity in Cranston to have our own headquarters building with plenty of parking.”

Emma said Universal currently serves more than 500 households, handles more than $200 million in client portfolios and, what is most important, helps its clients manage wealth by advising them on a range of issue that can affect their cash flow – not simply market performance.

“That total-service offering is our added competitive value,” she said.

Much of Universal’s success is credited by Emma to her early career as an athlete in what she calls “boy sports” – ice hockey and softball.

While still a student at St. Mary Academy Bay View, she spent much time at Boston College watching her brother, David, star in baseball and ice hockey and as an Olympic ice hockey player. She followed him to BC, playing ice hockey and softball.

Emma played varsity ice hockey and softball at both Boston College and Brown University. She graduated from Brown, where she majored in organizational behavior, management and psychology – subjects that became handier than she expected when she was planning a professional athletics career.

That athletic dream ended only a year later after a major automobile accident injured her spine.

She turned to a career in the financial world, beginning in the Providence office of Smith Barney. And despite her accident, Emma never gave up her involvement in ice hockey. She coached ice hockey at St. Mary Academy Bay View, became a member of the U.S. Olympic ice hockey development program and married Edward L. Walsh, who played professional baseball and ice hockey and later coached.

“I always wanted both a family and a career and gave birth to a son, Edward L. Walsh III, in 2007,” Emma said. “Unfortunately, my life had to change again because of another tragedy: My husband died only two years ago.”

She says her experiences have helped her relate to her clients’ own “frightening financial challenges” and develop Universal’s blend of services.

Sports, she said, trained her “never to give up.”

In that spirit, Universal is expanding. Working with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of R.I. and UnitedHealthcare of New England Inc., Universal will hold up to 70 health care educational events this year. Next year it will expand the presentations to Connecticut and Massachusetts. And the firm will be licensed to operate in 24 states.

“We believe that we are in the lead in providing an essential brand of wealth-management advice with one major objective: Help our clients [avoid] outliving their money,” Emma said. •

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