A LIONESS IN THE INDUSTRY

ANGIE RIBUFFO cares for her clients while she works toward adding another layer to the diversity of insurance and financial services.

By John Forcucci

Angie Ribuffo has been planning her “latest trip” to one of the polar regions, a visit to the Antarctic in early 2023. That might not be too surprising, as she makes her home in Anchorage, Alaska — and had traveled to the Arctic in August. As she spoke to INN for this article, she was digging out of a hefty 50 inches of snow. While that’s a lot, even for Anchorage, she took it in stride … just a small obstacle on her journey.

Ribuffo’s journey began as an Army brat — relocating with her family frequently as her father received new orders — and continued throughout her career, first as an Air Force nurse, then as a nursing instructor and finally as a financial advisor. Her success as an advisor has included building her own practice, serving as national president of Women in Insurance and Financial Services and, most recently, being honored as WIFS 2022 Woman of the Year.

That success has been achieved despite a financial services career that had an inauspicious start.

“I came into the industry with the thought that I would really be focusing on financial education, financial literacy,” she explained. “This sounds crazy, but I did not understand that I was really in sales.

“And when I was growing up, my family never talked about money.” That meant coming up to speed, learning about everything from the importance of life insurance to recession-proofing a portfolio.

Her husband, Steve, also served in the Air Force. But after Ribuffo spent five years as an Air Force nurse, she learned she and her husband would not be given a joint spouse assignment when it came time for his next reassignment.

“By that time, we had a brand-new baby boy,” she said. “So, I made the decision to separate from the service. We were stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in Lancaster, California. I went on to start my master’s degree, and I started teaching a certified nurse’s assistant program at Antelope Valley College.”

After Steve retired from the service, the couple decided to move to Anchorage, their favorite of all the places they previously had been stationed.

“Anchorage is a little town that thinks it’s big; it’s very cosmopolitan,” she explained. “We have a wonderful symphony orchestra, a wonderful performing arts center. It’s a foodie town.”

Ribuffo traces her path to becoming a financial advisor back to when she and her husband were first married.

“When we first got married, Steve had a financial advisor and had the basis of a

Prudential that tracked women over the course of 10 years, talking about financial services and the industry and what they felt about that,” Ribuffo said. “And essentially the research showed that the women found navigating financial services was too complicated.

“That became kind of a lighthouse for me. I decided that if I could help one woman understand and build a successful financial plan, then I would have accomplished something,” she continued. While the broker-dealer she worked for had a military-based practice, Ribuffo decided she wanted to “branch out” and add more women to her practice.

“I decided to leave them and open up a firm that enabled me to help the client base that I wanted to work with,” said Ribuffo.

Becoming a lioness

“In May 2019, I went out on my own to be independent,” she said. “I stood up my firm, Raion Financial Strategies. ‘Raion’ means ‘lion’ in Japanese. My mother was Japanese, and her favorite animal was a lion. We decided to name it as an homage to my mom. She wore a lion pin almost every day of her life. Before she died, she gave me the lion pin and said to me, ‘You’re now the lioness of the pride. It’s your responsibility to take care of the family.’ My children said, ‘Mom, that’s what you do with your clients. You take care of them.’ And so that’s how we named the firm.

financial plan. I was one of those people who grew up with just a savings account. That was it,” she said. “I got a real lesson about financial planning and financial advice very early on in our marriage. I saw the benefits of having a plan and reaching your goals.”

Then Ribuffo was approached by their financial services firm to see if she might be interested in a new career. “I was intrigued,” she said.

“I thought if financial planning can do this for me and my family — especially for someone like me who knew nothing about financial advice and planning — then it would be great if I could do that for others.

“I had read a research paper from

“I didn’t leave my military clients. I stretched myself and added more women and federal employees. And that’s my client base right now.

“In my practice, my female clients have become much more confident in the decision-making process,” explained Ribuffo. “Often, they came in quite tentative. They’d say, ‘OK, Angie, you tell us what we need to do, and then we’ll do it.’ And my conversation would be, ‘No, that’s not how I work. You’re going to learn about what we’re doing — the why of it. You need to really understand the why of it so you can make decisions about how you want to move forward.’”

Ribuffo understood that feeling of lacking confidence.

“I came into the field in 2008, not knowing what I didn’t know,” she said. “I