Total Value of Policies : $672 million

Background : Tracy Chen spent nearly two decades building a legal career before becoming a financial advisor. Born and raised in Taiwan, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in law in 2000 from National Taiwan University, often referred to as the “Harvard of Taiwan.” She then worked in mergers and acquisitions at game developer GigaMedia, before moving to New York in 2001 to attend NYU Law School. She spent 15 years in corporate law in Manhattan, earning around $300,000 a year by the time she left in 2016. But the cost was visible all around her: colleagues were at their desks until three in the morning, going to doctors’ appointments and coming straight back to work. She was a working mother of two in what she describes as a "big boys' club," pumping breast milk between meetings and taking only six weeks before returning to work full-time. Her breaking point was when a junior partner passed away from exhaustion, his body not found until the next morning. She remembers thinking, "If I don't do anything else to change the situation, that'll be me later." The switch came in 2016 when a friend from church, a financial advisor, tried to sell her a New York Life policy. Chen asked questions her friend couldn’t answer and asked to meet the manager — who quickly realized they should be recruiting Chen, not selling to her.

Philosophy/Strategy: Chen says she sells life insurance to people who don’t need life insurance. Her clients are highly tax-sensitive and often less concerned with growing their money than with protecting what they already have. Chen sees cash-value permanent life insurance as a strategy to cover estate taxes and other expenses without being forced to sell properties or liquidate stock. "Life insurance policies. It's not like you're leaving a lot of money for your kids so that they can become rich when you die… You're giving your kids tools or weapons to fight against the IRS when they need to have that fight without you,” she says. She notes that while municipal bonds may offer tax savings, they remain exposed to interest-rate risk and can’t keep pace with inflation.

Competitive Edge : Chen says almost no one else has her combination of a legal mind and a financial advisor’s toolkit. "A lot of attorneys don't know how financial products work and a lot of financial advisors don't know how the law works," she says. She points to clients sitting on years of appreciated stock as a prime example, saying that someone who bought into NVIDIA a decade ago and has watched it multiply now faces complicated decisions about how to pass on that wealth. “How do you eliminate the unrealized gain in the capital gains tax? How do you do everything together with trust and tax planning?” she says.

Building Relationships: Chen works with families whose net worth runs from $30 million to more than $100 million. A significant part of her client base includes people with multiple nationalities who want to protect assets in the U.S., send children to school here or set up domestic trusts. She describes herself as "a natural magnet" for those clients as a bilingual immigrant. She says many are drawn to the U.S. precisely because of its legal protections, something Chen understands firsthand. "We have the best legal system. We protect your private assets, which is different from how other countries sometimes operate," she says. Today, her business is roughly 80% insurance and 20% investments and services over 400 households across the tri-state area, Texas and Florida, supported by three full-time staff members and two financial advisors.

Best Advice : Chen describes herself as someone who takes criticism so seriously that she spent years feeling like she was never good enough. She has since learned to turn that inner critic into fuel and her advice, especially to young women: "More self-love. You are the most important person in the world. Don't let anybody talk you down."