Five UVU students receive financial planning scholarships

Photo courtesy of Woodbury School of Business

St. Louis-based brokerage firm TD Ameritrade recently announced its sixth annual NextGen RIA scholarship recipients: 12 financial planning students across the country — five of whom are UVU students.

The five $5000 scholarships were awarded to Mana Angilau, Kevin Cowan, Madisen Karlson, Colton Peck and Alex Graham, all students in the Woodbury School of Business Personal Financial Planning.

The TD Ameritrade Institutional NextGen scholarship supports the sustainability of the registered investment advisor (RIA) profession through programs designed to raise visibility, and provide support and resources to guide professional development of the next generation of advisors.

Additionally, TD Ameritrade Institutional awarded two universities NextGen RIA grants of $75,000 to assist in growing their financial planning degree programs, one of which is the University of Utah. This marks more than $4.5 million that the institution has invested in grants and scholarships over the past decade.

Other recipients of the scholarship include students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Liberty University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Kansas State University, Western Kentucky University, and University of Georgia.

Last year, three UVU students, Caishalynne Richins, Calli Case and Josh Pollard, were also awarded the annual $5000 scholarship. .

All 12 scholarship winners, including the five UVU students were in New York City on July 24, to ring the closing bell on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange to celebrate their achievement, and to help raise awareness of career opportunities in the financial planning field.

Scholarship recipient, Alex Graham, a Personal Financial Planning program student at UVU, says that ringing the closing bell was a one-of-a-kind experience.

“Being able to participate in the NASDAQ closing bell ceremony, and seeing my photo in Times Square, was unbelievable,” Graham said. “TD Ameritrade is incredibly generous to offer such a scholarship in efforts to build the RIA future, and I am very grateful to be selected as one of its scholarship recipients.”

Graham also directly attributes his success to the university’s Personal Financial Planning program. “The reason I chose the PFP program is because it provided me the opportunity to not only pursue a successful lifelong career, but also a career that is geared towards interacting and helping people,” Graham said.

Colton Peck, another scholarship recipient, is a junior Personal Financial Planning student. Colton says his love for numbers directed him to the Personal Financial Planning Program.

“I appreciate the scholarship given to me by TD Ameritrade, and enjoyed being able to travel with my wife to New York City to be a part of the closing bell ceremony at NASDAQ,” Bell said.