My name is Heidi Huiskamp Collins, and I am the founder and CEO of Huiskamp Collins Investments, LLC. I have been an active investor for over 38 years. I hold my Series 7 and Series 66 securities licenses, allowing me to do investing and financial planning while serving as a fiduciary, always putting my clients’ interests ahead of my own.
I’m a Quad-Cities girl. A graduate with honors from Augustana College with a B.A. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics, I was accepted into the Executive Program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University for my MBA when I was working at a big bank in the Chicagoland area after my stint at Augie. I went on to work for a Fortune 200 financial firm in the San Francisco Bay area before moving back home to raise my own family.
I’ve been fascinated by investing and finance since I’ve been a little girl adding up columns of numbers on my dad’s old-fashioned adding machine that he would bring home from work. While my sister was playing with Barbies, I was dreaming of being a CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. I worked at Blackhawk Bank & Trust for many years in all sorts of different roles. In 2005, at the request of the Board of Directors, I started the Wealth Management Division at that institution and became both the manager of the division and a licensed financial advisor, building the enterprise from zero to a successful profit-center. While there, I attended the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin / Madison where I was both valedictorian and president of my class.
In Spring of 2017, I decided to take on a new challenge, which allows me to focus all my energy on what I love most: personalized financial planning. Huiskamp Collins Investments, LLC is the result.
This is a different kind of investment firm because I’m a different kind of financial advisor. I’m passionate about investing; it’s what I do for fun! After a full day of work, I work out and enjoy dinner with my husband. Afterwards, I don’t watch TV or engage on social media. Instead, I read The Wall Street Journal cover-to-cover and then read financial magazines and blogs. I analyze stocks and pour over financial statements. The investments that I unearth from all that analysis are not the kind of ideas that one is going to find in a typical “one-size-fits-all” financial plan. I believe that all investors should have access to superior customer service and the best financial planning I can supply.
Even though it’s 2019, women are very underrepresented in the field of finance. In fact, only 14 percent of financial advisors are women.
When it comes to investing and financial planning, men and women are very different: they think and feel differently about money, risk, and financial goals, and I make it my mission to address these differences and plan accordingly. Over the years, I’ve very successfully helped women, men, and couples navigate their financial journeys. I will continue to serve all my clients to the best of my abilities. I have felt called recently, though, to target women and the people they love. That includes married couples. In a typical relationship, the wife or the female partner has a decent chance of outliving her spouse or partner.
When we sculpt a plan for her spouse or partner, we need to make sure her needs will be properly met if that happens. I have heard too many stories from female clients who didn’t feel “heard” during financial conversations or felt their advisors talked only to their partner or talked over their head. I am a big believer in financial literacy and work hard to educate all my clients in plain English as to the “whats,” “whys,” and “whens” of the investments I choose for them. I tell all my clients that we will operate as “partners” in making decisions on goals and courses of action.
Regarding women, I’m now married to my best friend, but I’ve been a divorcee, a single mom, and have had the honor of assisting many widows after their life partners have passed. I understand. I know the fears, the worries, and what keeps women up at night. I’m a mother, a wife, a daughter, a business owner, and a friend. I have the experience and expertise, but I know you don’t care about alpha and beta and risk coefficients. I’m all about the relationships I have with my clients and helping them meet all their goals, be they financial, professional, or personal.
Community outreach, especially making a better world for children, is a cornerstone of my personal mission and one of the reasons I left the corporate world to establish my own firm. I volunteer weekly at Lourdes Catholic School and teach Junior Achievement at Paul Norton Elementary. I am thrilled to be a Charter Member of Women United, which strives for early childhood education and kindergarten-readiness for all children, regardless of socioeconomic status. I have also mentored “at-risk” children through Big Brothers / Big Sisters for the last 20 years. In addition, I am on the board of the Rock Island / Milan 1st Day Fund which distributes free school supplies to at-risk children in the Rock Island / Milan School District. In 2018, the board distributed supplies to 4,800 children with an economic impact of just shy of $100,000.00. I am also thrilled to serve on the Board of the Martin Luther King Center in Rock Island along with six other non-profit boards in the Quad-Cities community that I am honored to sit on.
The flexibility entailed with owning my own firm is such a gift. I work seven days a week and am at the office or visiting clients many more hours than I did in my corporate job, but taking good care of my clients on my own terms is my passion. Having pockets of “free” time during the week to serve the communities that have been so good to me feeds my soul. My ambition to successfully help my clients attain their goals has finally meshed with my purpose of lifting up children in the community and serving on community boards that align with my passions. When I have the opportunity to leave the office and go eat lunch every Thursday with a beautiful “at-risk” 4th grader who comes from a family of 11 children, I know I’m where I’m supposed to be.
Securities offered through J.W. Cole Financial, Inc. (JWC) Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through J.W. Cole Advisors, Inc. (JWCA). Huiskamp Collins Investments, LLC and JWC/JWCA are unaffiliated entities.
I would love to connect with you and show you that finding expertise in financial planning with a heart really does make a difference in your client experience. Please call me at 563-949-4705 (office) or 309-738-1464 (cell), or reach out with an email to heidi@hhcinvestments.net.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.