The Certified Financial Board of Standards has created a new position to plug the CFP designation as the gold standard of financial planning. And this week, it announced it filled the post with the hiring of veteran consumer marketing executive Tom Crowder as the organization's new managing director of marketing and business development.
Crowder's marching orders include raising both the public awareness of--and the preference for--the CFP standard, as well as boosting the number of financial advisors who hold the CFP designation.
The CFP Board aims to do that through marketing and collaborative efforts with other organizations, such as those that hire or interact with CFP certificants.
"This is an important hire for CFP Board because it builds our capacity to communicate the value of working with a CFP professional," CFP Board's CEO Kevin Keller said in a statement.
Prior to coming to the CFP Board, Crowder was vice president of marketing at Verizon. Among other things, he oversaw the launch of the company's bundled product offering called Verizon Freedom. Before that, Crowder held senior positions at J. Walter Thompson and other advertising agencies where his programs won many national awards and appeared on Advertising Age magazine's annual best TV commercials list.
Crowder begins his new job on June 14.