Chelsea Bawab

Super proud of Jake Bawab for achieving Advisor of the Year for our firm! Can’t believe they gave you a mic for 20 minutes, but good job keeping it mostly appropriate. Thank you for all you do for your family and your clients, we love you!

It would be difficult to overstate how proud I am of our firm’s Rookie of the Year Chris Greenwood. When we recruited Chris, he was leaving his 15-year career to do something completely different. It was a huge leap of faith, and I am so happy he took it. He’s a true testament to trusting the process, doing the right thing even when it’s the hard thing, and never giving up. Congrats friend, you earned it.

Proud to be part of Northwestern Mutual, a company committed to building a better tomorrow. From expanding financial access to investing in our communities, read the 5 takeaways from the 2023 Northwestern Mutual Sustainability and Social Impact report here: http://spr.ly/6181Qq0tB

Last week, our agency did a planning day for the upcoming year. One of the exercises was to write out a 10-year vision. If you've never done that before, it's daunting. I had the hardest time thinking about what I want life to look like 10 years from now.

One thing that helped was thinking back 10 years and considering how much has changed since then. Ten years ago, I was 22 years old. That year, I completed my Masters degree, got married, and moved out with my new husband and our 4-year-old daughter. I was working my first big-kid job in marketing, and was crossing my fingers that this whole financial advisor thing my husband was doing would work out.

To say I'm not the same woman today as I was 10 years ago would be an understatement. And so I know 10 years from now, life will look drastically different than it does now. How do I know that?

Because the one thing that's been consistent throughout the past 10 years has been an unquenchable desire to learn, grow, and become the best version of myself. It's taken years to learn, but what I've finally accepted about life is that the more audacious I am, the more success I experience. The more I ground into who I am and what I value, and the bolder I am at living that out, the more beautifully full my life becomes.

So... where are you going to be in 10 years? What are you building now that is going to come to fruition over the next decade? What will you be proud of 10 years from now, that seems overly audacious now? Lean into that. Growth starts right there, where it feels the most impossible.

Hi there, I'm Chelsea! I've been the Director of Recruitment for the Northwestern Mutual Coastal Virginia office for the past 3 years, and I've decided it's high time I started sharing about that journey here.

If you already know me, you might know that my background is actually in writing, not recruiting. I have a Masters degree in strategic communication and have spent a majority of my career in marketing and journalism. If you would have told me 10 years ago I'd be working in finance, I would've laughed.

But here's what I've learned since making this transition and meeting with hundreds of candidates who are thinking about making a career change: we're capable of way more than we give ourselves credit for.

Everything we've experienced is preparing us for what's next, and it might be something we never expected. We just have to be open to the possibilities.