Megan Cameron

Megan O’Dean knows as well as anyone that life can take unexpected turns. She originally wanted to go to college in her home state of California, but decided to attend Hillsdale College in Michigan instead. While she began as a pre-med major, she finished by graduating with an accounting degree. 

Looking back, Megan realizes that the move from medicine to finance was not such a big change after all. Despite the career shift, she never lost her desire to help people. Rather than helping families improve their physical health, she works with them to improve their financial health.

“Helping people is definitely the part of my job that I enjoy the most,” she says. 

In her role as Family Wealth Adviser, Megan guides families through life’s many changes and challenges. While she enjoys analyzing data and creating a plan, that is not the only satisfying element of her career. “It’s also being able to hear that [plan] presented to the family, see it carried through, and know the effect that it’ll have down the road,” Megan says.

Megan originally intended to return to California after graduating from Hillsdale, but there were still more changes ahead of her. She remained in the Midwest to complete an internship, and then accept a job, with TDC’s Investment Advisory. At TDC, she found a family-like culture that went against her preconceived notions of finance.

“My idea of finance at the time was really just limited to people cold calling or stock picking, and in my head that seemed more transactional than anything else’” Megan says. “TDC quickly reversed that notion and shared a firm-wide commitment to providing holistic planning for their clients and their families. It wasn’t just about investments, that was part of it, of course, but instead it was an array of tools, processes, and systems that helped touch many parts of our clients’ financial lives. This is how they help families be families.”

The emphasis on family is evident throughout the TDC workplace. “We’re all working together towards the same goal,” Megan says. “We’re all trying to better ourselves and better the company for our clients. No one’s self-interested and all of our goals are aligned.”

Besides her desire to help people, Megan’s openness to opportunities allowed her to stay flexible in response to the many changes she experienced. That is especially valuable when working with a growing and evolving company like TDC.

“I’m just really excited to see where everything goes,” she says. “It’s great to see an organization that isn’t complacent. I don’t have to worry about there not being opportunities as my career develops. It’s quite the opposite. The challenge of being able to keep up with all of the exciting new initiatives and programs we’re developing for clients, and the opportunities that present themselves along the way to enable us to do even more for clients is what excites me the most. We are expanding by leaps and bounds and that ultimately means being able to help more families.”