BEAT

NUMBER CRUNCHER

Jackie Yoder uses her mathematical mind to inspire and encourage independence

While growing up on a dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania, Jackie Yoder discovered she had a special talent. “No, it was not for milking anything,” Yoder says. “As early as kindergarten, I was just always a whiz with numbers.” Her prowess was a point of pride for her father, who was as much an entrepreneur as a farmer, as well as her homemaker mother. “Math was still very much considered a ‘boy subject,’ even in the 1990s,” Yoder says. “But I didn’t care because math was going to help me reach my dream, which was to lead a business like my dad.” Yoder’s desire only grew when, at just 8 years old, her father passed away. “Seeing my mother’s world crumble when we lost my dad made me double down on my studies,” says Yoder, who graduated at the top of her class in high school and then attended Mount Aloysius College to study accounting in the early 2000s. Armed with her degree in 2006, Yoder made the move to Arizona. More than 10 years later, Yoder earned her master’s degree and took on the role of Mom. “When I became a mother, I realized my greatest strength was not in deciphering numbers, but in showing others how to not be intimidated by them,” Yoder says. In 2017, she set out on a quest to help others as a volunteer mentor at New Pathways for Youth. Her ability to educate and inspire eventually brought her to Wilde Wealth Management Group in 2020, both as chief operating officer and head of the firm’s community outreach arm. Under her leadership, Yoder nearly doubled the size of the business in just 18 months while establishing regular volunteer activities for the staff and encouraging her colleagues to take leadership roles within the community. “I also joined the board of Chrysalis in recent months, eager to help women touched by domestic abuse reclaim their independence,” she says. This fall, Yoder will be overseeing the expansion of Wilde’s headquarters, which will allow her to bring a handful of similarly financially savvy female leaders into the firm. “Math may have been a ‘boy subject’ when I was in school, but today’s financial world is open to all great minds, as it should be,” she says.

BY ALISON BAILIN BATZ / PHOTO BY CLAUDIA JOHNSTONE