He taught accounting as an adjunct professor at Howard University and hosted a local financial TV program called "Common Cents." And he worked for the American Institute for Free Labor Development, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, where he did economic development and financial consulting in the Caribbean and South America, namely Brazil, Bahamas and Ecuador.
He returned from abroad in 1969 and a year later established a consulting firm, specializing in financial planning, tax planning and financial management. Reynolds, his former boss, had become a tax attorney and Davis inherited those clients. “And so, I had a book of work when I started. I didn’t have to create clients,” he said, noting that most of the clients were Black professionals in the D.C. area.
“I said now that I am an entrepreneur, the job now is how can I fit this into what I would want to do in life and help people,” he said. “I didn’t want to fall in love with balance sheets and profit and loss statements and that type of thing because I wouldn’t necessarily be helping anybody,” he added.
Davis explained that it was after he read the Kiplinger piece that he joined the International Association for Financial Planning (IAFP), which had chapters throughout the country. The D.C. chapter, which he joined, was the national chapter. The IAFP in 2000 became the Financial Planning Association.
“I went to my first symposium, and I was the only Black person there. So, therefore, I was a deer in the headlights,” he said. “And then I ran into who I call my ‘Good Samaritan’ who has helped me until as of today. She has been helping me all the way. Her name is Alexandra Armstrong.”
Armstrong, who was president of the chapter, “came up to me and welcomed me with open arms,” he said. “She said you have done everything you need to be a part of his chapter and I am going to put you on all the committees that fit your background,” Davis said. “So, I was on every committee of the IAFP.”
A year later in 1987, Armstrong’s term as president ended and Davis was elected president of the chapter. “I had only been there a year, but they had seen enough of me to know that I knew what I was talking about. It was a unanimous vote.”
Armstrong, principal of Armstrong Fleming & Moore Inc. in Washington, D.C., was one of the first woman in 1977 to get the CFP designation (the first in Washington D.C.). She had worked in the stock brokerage industry prior to becoming a financial planner and creating her firm in 1983.
She described that first encounter with Davis: “I was in the meeting and into the room strode this very attractive African-America man, impeccably dressed and looking around because he didn’t know anybody,” she recalled. “So, I went over and started talking to him and I thought he was so interesting, and I introduced him around."
Armstrong said she “sort of maneuvered it” so that Davis would be the next president of the organization because she thought the Washington, D.C., chapter should have an African American president. “If I was looking for a better person to promote, I couldn’t think of anybody else,” she said. She added that Davis has been a good spokesperson for the industry. “And I know he has inspired multiple people as well to follow his example. So, as they say, it takes a village,” she said.
Davis said Armstrong has opened doors and backed him every step of the way of his career. “She just took me under her wings," Davis said, adding that as a woman in male-dominated industry, Armstrong knew he would face some of the same pushback she faced in the industry. “She said, ‘I know if I experienced it as a white woman, then you are going to experience it and it probably will be worse’ so you are going to different need somebody to lean on."
He also credits the late Robert Ginsburgh, a retired Air Force major general who was on the National Security Council staff during the Johnson administration, for helping to guide his career. After retiring from the Army, Ginsburgh headed Neville Associates, a financial planning and portfolio management firm in Washington, D.C.
Davis recalled Ginsburgh inviting him to lunch at the exclusive University Club in Washington at a “time when they would not service Black people.” And one of the first things he said Ginsburgh told him was, “You passed the examination, and you are a CFP and that got you to the table, but that won’t get you anything off the table,” Davis said. “And he went right into telling me how to take money and how to make a living in financial planning.”
As he plans for succession, Davis has chosen to transition his clients to one of his mentees, Daphne Wright. “She is well qualified,” he said. Wright, a financial advisor with LPL Financial, also operates an independent tax practice in Sterling Va., as a CPA.
Wright said she has “high regard and respect” for Davis’s commitment to the profession. “He exhibits the highest degree of integrity in working with clients, in supporting and working to open doors of opportunity for African American financial advisors, and to [bringing] knowledge and financial education to those that he can reach in the Black community,” she said.
"He doesn’t try to turn out clones of himself,” she said. Instead, she said he has always encouraged her and his other mentees “to be students of their profession and learn all that they can and excel in the areas that they most want to develop as their focus.”
Wright also noted that Davis, who is referred to as the “Godfather” by advisors who know him, has never been impressed with the fanfare that comes with his reputation and notoriety as the first African American CFP. “He has a great deal of humility and just sees his purpose as a God-given directive to do unto others as others have done unto him in supporting him, believing in him, and helping him launch his career,” she said.
When asked what has surprised him the most about the industry, Davis, after much thought, said, “how I was accepted to the dance. I got that invitation and the call to the dance,” adding that he does not believe he could have done it if he had not had “the helping hand early in the game to at least show the people that I could do certain things."
But there were many other people of color who never had the opportunity to progress in the industry because they were never given the chance, Davis said. “We had to pass the same examinations and do everything that other people did, and every time we get an opportunity to do something, we do it well. But we have to get the opportunity to do well,” he said.