Living in Full Colour: Six Years On, Dawn Thomas Reflects on Advice with Heart
Almost six years ago, Financial Standard put Dawn Thomas on the cover of its magazine. This year they came back to find out what had changed.
The result is a podcast episode called “Living in Full Colour”, in which Senior Wealth Adviser Dawn Thomas reflects on authenticity, heart-led advice, her PhD research and her decision to become a shareholder in The Wealth Designers.
The original profile leaned heavily on authenticity, from embracing her grey hair to refusing the idea that advisers need to fit a particular mould. Asked how that understanding had shifted, Dawn’s answer was refreshingly plain. Over time, she said, “you just sit more comfortably in it”. It only catches her now when someone stops to point it out.
She also traced the path that brought her here.
Dawn arrived in Australia intending to build a career in journalism and ended up in financial advice instead, and she is convinced those skills never left her.
In journalism, everything centres on the subject and why their story matters. In advice, it is the client. That training taught her to communicate with people in whatever way they need, whether that means pulling out a whiteboard or drawing something on paper until it clicks.
Heart-led advice is the phrase most people associate with Dawn, and she described what it actually looks like in practice. It starts with connection, which for her is a physical response, and it means going properly into what is happening in someone’s life before offering a solution. Sometimes the solution is not a strategy at all. Sometimes it is reassurance and the willingness to listen.
Since that first profile, Dawn has become a shareholder in the business. Her reasoning was characteristically direct. She was not going anywhere, so she decided to invest her time where she had already invested her heart. Having spent years searching for the right advice home, she found a team she rates and an advice proposition she is proud of, so the opportunity simply made sense. Equity, she said, has mostly formalised the leadership she was already exercising, and put a bit of structure around work she was doing anyway.
That sense of responsibility runs through her research too. Dawn is completing a part-time PhD at Edith Cowan University examining Gen Z and superannuation, built around a theory called family financial socialisation, which looks at the role parents play in their children’s financial outcomes. Her view is that financial illiteracy has become intergenerational, passed down when parents lack either the knowledge or the confidence to model good habits. It is the same thinking behind the START WELL® program and podcast at The Wealth Designers, both designed to help parents take the money conversation home.
She was also asked about artificial intelligence, given how many young people now turn to it for financial guidance. Dawn is not opposed to it, but she is clear about its limits. The advisers who endure, she believes, will be the most human ones. On the gender gap, she was blunt that the statistics have barely moved, which is part of why her research focuses on young people.
“Reach them early, and you change the outcome for a generation of women before the gap opens.”
Perhaps the most telling moment came when she was asked what she is proudest of. Not an award or a milestone, but the young people of immigrant backgrounds who approach her at events, curious and proud, because they see someone who sounds and looks like them with a place in this profession.
We are proud to have Dawn on the team, and prouder still of what she is building beyond it.
Listen to the full episode here.