By Heidi Huiskamp, Founder and CEO of Huiskamp Collins Investments, LLC
Huiskamp Collins Investments, LLC was founded in 2017 and I am very proud and so grateful to my clients who have recently voted my business as one of the five Honorees in the 2020 Quad-City Times Readers’ Choice Awards in the category of Financial Firms. You might already work with a financial advisor. He or she might have rolled over your 401(k), sold you an annuity, or maybe set up a college savings plan for your children or grandchildren. I bet they make sure you get your statements on time, send you your tax forms, and even meet with you once a year to review your accounts. You probably think the level of service you receive is acceptable and the norm for financial professionals. What if I told you that I interact differently with my clients? What if I told you that I treat my clients like family, take a “one-stop-shop” approach to make my customers’ lives easier and forge a relationship with my clients, operating with honesty, trustworthiness, and integrity, that helps my customers sleep at night? I have been an active investor for 40 years and a licensed financial advisor for almost 20 years. I hold my Series 7 and Series 66 securities licenses and ONLY do business as a fiduciary. A fiduciary is someone who ALWAYS puts their client’s best interests ahead of their own: no ifs, ands, or buts.
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. Pre-COVID, I volunteered weekly at Lourdes Catholic School and taught 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 and currently mentor Myiah, a 6th grader at The Rock Island Academy who lives in poverty and has 11 brothers and sisters. 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 2020, the board distributed supplies to 4,800 children with an economic impact of just shy of $100,000. I am also thrilled to serve on the Board of the Martin Luther King Center in Rock Island and am the President of the Bettendorf Business Network in addition to serving on six other non-profit boards in the Quad-Cities community.
A long-time volunteer, I am at a point in my career now that I want to step more into philanthropy. In 2020, women control more wealth in the U.S. than men, and with women having longer life spans than men, that trend promises to continue. I want to model to other women that it’s time for us to step into our power and support the causes that speak to our souls. This year, I donated $75,000 to NEST Café, a new non-profit in Rock Island that addresses hunger, inequality, and community-building in a creative and innovative way. My donation will be used to build a commercial kitchen for this organization which will offer a “pay-as-you-can” model that has already been adopted at over 60 other sites across the country. I also made a significant gift to Heart of Hope Ministries in Rock Island this year. These folks operate a food pantry that weekly feed many, many local families and then, additionally, deliver over 100 boxes of fresh produce, meat, dairy, and non-perishables to elderly and disabled households across the Quad-Cities who would find it a hardship to leave their homes. Since the non-profit’s inception, they have been using a 19-year-old donated van to make runs to the foodbank and deliveries to clients. On its last leg, the van needs to be replaced and Heart of Hope implemented a Go-Fund-Me page in an effort to raise funds. After a tour and a long talk with their leadership, I made a decision. I have more than enough shoes, so the answer was clear: I bought them a 2021 box truck so they could make less trips to the foodbank, transport more food, and feed more hungry neighbors. In 2020, I want more people to realize that philanthropists don’t all need to look like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
Earlier this year, I was deeply humbled and honored to be chosen as the 2020 Athena Award Winner. Women in our community are nominated by their peers as being leaders in their business or profession, serving as a role model to other women in their profession and the broader community, bringing creativity and innovation to their professions and contributing their time and energy to community betterment. Many women were nominated and the field was narrowed down to four Honorees who were recognized at a wonderful luncheon. A selection committee of past Honorees and community leaders chose one winner, announced at the luncheon, and I was truly blessed to hear my name and be called to the stage. I was so grateful to be named an Honoree and was not expecting to win so had not prepared any remarks. Instead, I told the story about one of my clients I called “Mary” who provides round-the-clock care 365 days a year to her infirm husband who is wheelchair-bound and cannot speak. “Mary” and the other unsung women in our communities who take care of our babies, our aging parents, our sick spouses, our church committees, our P.T.A.s…those sisters of mine are my heroes. I’m not half the women that they are in the acts of great love that they perform selflessly every day.
As regards to investing, I’m passionate about it…it’s what I do for fun! After a full day of work, I greet our standard poodle, Lucy, 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 pore over financial statements at my kitchen table. 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 and attention to all their needs that I can supply.
I would love to connect with you and show you that finding expertise in financial planning with a heart and getting your “financial house in order” really does make a difference in your client experience.
Please call me at 563-949-4705 or email me at heidi@hhcinvestments.net. Thank you in advance for your consideration.
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.