This is a hard time to tell skittish investors to buy stocks, bonds and other investments, even if the economic crisis has put everything on sale. But Eleanor Blayney, who loves analogies, explains it to investors this way: Buying when others are selling is like steering into the skid when driving on ice-it's counterintuitive, but it works.

Blayney, a CFP with more than 20 years in the financial planning business and a former partner at Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney in McLean, Va., has been tackling such conversations head-on in a brand new role on the CFP Board of Standards: that of its first consumer advocate.

In this new position, created at the beginning of 2009, Blayney has been helping calm the panic of clients. Some of them, for example, have lost their jobs and she's helping by devising steps to guide them through the first few months of unemployment. Ultimately, she is offering guidance on how people can take control of their financial lives-Blayney feels control is important for all investors, and particularly for women. (More on that subject later.)

Her new job makes Blayney the first official public face of the CFP Board, though it wasn't her first role for the Washington, D.C.-based organization. Before her appointment, she had served as a volunteer on the board for years, and helped develop its first CFP practice standards.

"There was a lot of resistance to creating standards at first just because financial advisors, in what was then a new field, did not want rules imposed by someone else," says Marilyn Capelli Dimitroff, the president of the CFP Board and a friend of Blayney's who worked alongside her in standards development. "Now the standards have become the bedrock of the profession."

Recently, however, Blayney and CFP Board CEO Kevin Keller began to feel that something different was needed beyond standards, particularly as the dire economic challenges began to surface in early 2008. Using paper place mats on the table where they were having lunch, the two began sketching out the job of a liaison between CFPs and consumers. Blayney happened to be leaving one firm and starting up another when the new role came together.

"Kevin had this vision of creating a face and a voice for the CFP profession and for the board," says Blayney. "It would be someone who could speak to consumers and professionals-someone who could do a tremendous job of building the profession and creating standards of excellence and communicating that to the public.

She says the timing of the new position couldn't have been more perfect. "The American consumer is going through a crisis of confidence. They are confused and they feel betrayed by the financial world. Right now, in particular, it is important for consumers to know they can trust the integrity of CFPs. They need to know that the profession meets ethical standards and enforces compliance."

She adds, "Despite the dark clouds that are hanging over us, people who use a financial planner have much greater confidence in themselves and have a better sense of control."

In her new role, Blayney has been issuing press releases on financial issues, talking on radio and television and doing interviews for publications. In the next few months, she wants to communicate to the public what the CFP Board does to build and support the profession.

Keller feels the goal of the consumer advocate is to build the value of the CFP certification and to communicate that value to the public. "When the consumer understands the value of using a CFP, the advisors benefit," he says. "When Eleanor and I cooked up this idea for a consumer advocate, it just made sense for her to be that person. Our surveys show us certificants want to do a better job of communicating with the public.

"We were looking for an authoritative source to be available to the media," he adds, "and Eleanor can draw on her history of successful financial planning to be that source. The job is only a few months old, but she is making a contribution beyond our initial hopes."

Dimitroff and Blayney have been friends since they entered the profession in the 1980s, when there were few women in the field. The friendship grew stronger when they worked on practice standards together. Blayney also helped develop the international standards for the profession. "Eleanor brings a great competence in planning to the board, and she had years of hands-on experience at a very large, prestigious financial planning firm," Dimitroff says.

The board members are volunteers, and presidents serve for one year. Having a consumer advocate, however, gives the board a permanent person to speak at events and communicate with the public.

"She is articulate, hard-working and passionate," Dimitroff says. "I think the role of consumer advocate will grow as it becomes more established."

Blayney says she is grateful to have been in on the beginning of the profession, is proud to have helped develop the standards that now guide planners and loves the idea of creating a new role for an advocate. "When I started, the idea of a financial planner was new," she remembers. "Now I can go to my daughter's class career day, and tell her classmates that they can grow up to be financial planners and what a wonderful career it is. You couldn't do that when I started because most people did not even know what fiduciary meant. Myself, and a lot of others, had the opportunity to help shape this profession."

Blayney started far from financial planning as an English major studying at the University of Cambridge. But when she returned to the United States, she felt she needed a more practical profession. She earned her M.B.A. and landed a job doing financial analysis for government agencies.

"Working for the government was not my cup of tea. I was not seeing any tangible results," Blayney explains. "I needed to sit across the table and look someone in the eye and see that I was making a difference."

She heard about the emerging profession of financial planning and visited some advisors. "I met a lot of dedicated, interesting, passionate people and that's when I knew what I wanted to do."

She worked for a couple of financial firms before helping found Sullivan, Bruyette, Speros and Blayney Inc. in McLean, Va., and Chicago., where she specialized in large-scale investment strategies for high-net-worth individuals. That firm was bought about five years ago by Harris Bank.

Meanwhile, besides taking on her new CFP Board role, Blayney has launched a new venture of her own called Directions Inc., a company aimed at women advisors and investors that she hopes to have up and running this fall. "The idea is to speak to women about financial planning on their own terms," Blayney says. "Women will live longer and probably will spend a significant time alone at the end of their lives. They are more likely to have taken care of an elderly parent and put their own needs aside. In the game of life, women's [golf] tees are way behind men's.

"Women talk about things differently," she says. "They are more process driven rather than performance driven. They are usually more conservative investors, but they may need to take more risks to earn the returns they need."

Blayney is in the process of setting up regional centers for women financial advisors who specialize in female clients. She is also writing a book on the subject.

"I see Directions' mission as twofold," she says. One aspect is "creating a community of women CFPs who are interested in developing women clients. This is a profession that women are breaking into on both the professional level and as clients. Of 60,000 CFPs, one in four are women. I think I know about how to talk to women and I want to help planners develop that technique.

"The other side is that the CFPs then will develop a circle of women clients," she envisions. "This is another ground-floor effort-like entering the profession at an early stage and now being able to be the first CFP Board consumer advocate-that I am lucky enough to be a part of."