Joanne Spears serves as a Senior Portfolio Advisor & Financial Advisor with the Beacon Group, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. She utilizes a diverse skill set acquired over her 30-year career in finance to assist clients achieve their financial goals. She also produces high gain networking & educational workshops to inform, engage, & connect professional & entrepreneurial women in our community. These "Invest in Yourself" events, held in NYC & the Jersey Shore, offer unique topics selected to encourage career & personal growth, are highly interactive, & bring together participants from a wide variety of business sectors who might not otherwise have the opportunity to meet.

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Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Joanne ran QERI, a New York-based sector-specific hedge fund, served as COO & Business Development Manager for Hudson Capital Group, a quantitative trading firm specializing in options market making, & brokered OTC Natural Gas options for GFI. Joanne started her career as a grain trader, managing export & domestic physical grain portfolios in key locations for the largest privately held company in the country. She moved to New York in 1990, where she managed marketing for the firm’s NYMEX Energy institutional brokerage desk, established the SIMEX Crude oil team in Singapore, & brokered global Energy products in Geneva & London.

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Joanne attended the University of California, Davis, earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations with a Minor in Japanese language. She volunteers locally for her daughters’ schools, the Boys & Girls Club, Fulfil (Foodbank of Ocean/Monmouth counties), & the Women’s Exchange of Merrill Lynch (mentor, educational coordinator, & community outreach).