Allison Donaldson

Allison Donaldson is the Board Member at the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce. Allison Donaldson can be contacted via phone at +1 203-972-8262 or via email at allison@htgadvisors.com. My route to a career in wealth management started, believe it or not, with my love of all things French. I began studying French in middle school and the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I participated in an immersion program in Montreal. I chose to pursue a French major at Hamilton College because of its reputable year-long study abroad program in Paris. After graduating from college, a head hunter introduced me to NeubergerBerman, an investment management firm that had just signed a joint venture with BNP. After an intense interview in French with one of the partners, I was offered an entry level job with a portfolio management team. Other than my interview, I never spoke a word of French at Neuberger, but I did gain interest and experience in investment management. Before too long, Neuberger agreed to sponsor me for the Executive MBA program at NYU’s Stern School of Business. After two full years of classes, working full time, and getting married, I graduated in 1996 with an MBA in Finance. I continued to service Neuberger’s institutional clients from New Jersey to Maine for several years. I particularly enjoyed helping organizations understand their investments and build diversified portfolios. After taking some time off to raise my three sons, the “original HTG” (Tom Gnuse) invited me to the office to network with some of his colleagues and ultimately offered me a job. I realize now that he saw something in me that I didn’t yet see in myself—that I had the experience and compassion to serve families well on their financial journeys. Pivoting to work with individuals rather than institutions was the missing piece to a very satisfying career for me. Then, to round out my education and give me a solid foundation for working with families, I received my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation a few years after joining HTG.