Advice with heart — and steel under the glitter

Dawn Thomas has a service-driven worldview she has sharpened over an advice career that began, almost accidentally, with a migration constraint and a willingness to walk into rooms where she wasn’t expected to belong.

Thomas arrived in Western Australia from Singapore with rebellion in mind – both academic and cultural. After being “forced into science and math” at home, upon graduating from high school she convinced her parents to let her study mass communications at Murdoch University. She immersed herself in study, but also the manifold attractions of Perth’s uni-student life – freedoms she had barely experienced growing up in Singapore.

Journalism, she thought, would be the path: the craft of story, the discipline of curiosity, the instinct for what matters to people.

Those instincts didn’t disappear. They simply changed outlets.

On graduating, she found that securing a visa while applying for permanent residency narrowed her options, and WA’s graduate programs were limited. So, she cast a wider net, applied to local bank Bankwest, and took what she describes as a branch role – “the person that opens up bank accounts.”

Within six months she identified an internal financial planning graduate program and applied.

The response was disbelief: she didn’t have a “finance background.” But her media training quietly reasserted itself. She didn’t treat the interview like a conversation; she treated it like a presentation.

“I just thought, OK, I’m going to stand up and present. I’m going to bring all my visual aids.”

Her task was to explain credit cards. She turned it into a lesson in clarity, explaining and demystifying an everyday product. It worked. She got in.

The program was structured – until it wasn’t. Bankwest’s ownership changed after the GFC, cost pressures mounted, and the graduate intake was cut from 14 to three. Everyone had to re-interview.

Thomas survived the cull. The early phase was credential-heavy: Kaplan diplomas, accreditation, structured check-ins. The next phase was apprenticeship, following advisers and doing whatever was required: file notes, applications, referrals, document binding. “I just did whatever I was asked to do, to help the advisers,” she says.

It was also an unexpected education in Western Australia. Rotating through branches exposed her to the rhythms of the state – how industry cycles, geography and family dynamics shape financial decision-making.

Then came another cultural adjustment. A manager told her he wasn’t going to declare her “ready” to advise. What he wanted was grit – someone prepared to argue that they deserved the role.

For Thomas, raised in a system where progression comes after ticking boxes, the penny dropped: in Australia, you have to put your case forward.

If her career has a hinge year, it is 2010.

That was the year she learned she would be licensed as an adviser. In the same week, she discovered she was pregnant. At the same time, she was negotiating to begin a Masters of Applied Finance.

“I entered the Masters being an adviser, and pregnant… studying… starting from dawn,” she says, laughing. “It was very intense.”

The Masters took four years part-time, followed by CFP extensions that brought the total to six. On paper, it reads like relentless professional development. In reality, Thomas describes it as armour.

In a profession still shaped by perception, she learned early that competence is not always presumed – particularly if you are a woman, and particularly if you do not “sound” Australian. “There were not many women, and there’s still not that many women in advice,” she says. “Let alone many women from different cultural backgrounds.”

She recalls being mistaken for administrative staff at industry events and judged before speaking. So she chose qualifications that could not be waved away: Masters, CFP. She calls it the “language of competency” – not because it made her capable, but because it removed doubt.

The payoff was freedom. Thomas can be “fluffy and glittery,” wear blue hair, and express warmth and personality without being reduced to it – because if anyone challenges her capability, she can invite them to “pick one area” where she is incompetent.

That confidence is central to her presence, though she resists the word “brand.” She insists she has simply become more herself. “I don’t know how to be anyone that I’m not.”

Clients have given her titles: “the fairy godmother of superannuation,” “the goddess of secure futures.” She wears them lightly, but they point to something real. Thomas is a superannuation specialist who enjoys solving complexity at the moment it starts to matter most.

Her client base is roughly 50–60 per cent retirees or pre-retirees, with the remainder accumulators. She finds deep satisfaction in helping people plan into retirement, because superannuation is intricate, consequential and often misunderstood – even by those who believe they’ve done everything right.

Yet what distinguishes her practice is not technical expertise alone. It is the two-way nature of the relationship.

Thomas doesn’t only advocate for clients; she chooses clients who will advocate for her. She wants openness, directness and trust – and she is candid when the fit isn’t there.

“If they have their walls up, it’s really hard for me,” she says. Clients who dominate discussions, refuse to share information, or ignore advice are, in her view, “wasting your money… paying us to just give you paperwork.”

The best relationships are collaborative – couples aligning decisions, retirees navigating MyGov, families dealing with intergenerational pressures. Service, she says, makes her “so happy,” and it’s difficult to doubt her sincerity.

One client, now more friend than client, has joked about attaching a glucose monitor to her because she feels “invested” in Thomas’s health. It is humorous, but it reveals something many advisers struggle to create: loyalty grounded in care and competence, not just performance reporting.

Thomas works at Perth-based The Wealth Designers, a fixed-fee firm centred on values-driven discovery. She speaks of certainty maps, Maslow-inspired goal conversations and the influence of Kaizen – continuous improvement.

“Money is not the end-goal,” she says. “It’s a tool to get them somewhere.”

The firm does not lead with product performance. It leads with purpose: understanding what matters and structuring finances accordingly.

In the background, structural regrouping at AZ Next Generation Advisory (AZ NGA), which took a stake in The Wealth Designers in 2023, is reshaping reporting lines and alignment. Thomas acknowledges the uncertainty but remains focused on what she can control – her clients, her team and the culture that allows her to practise with integrity.

Outside the day job, she is committed to widening the funnel into advice, particularly for women. She keeps her phone open to new entrants – not formally mentoring, but taking calls on her commute, explaining how to pitch seminars and sharing candid insights about workplace culture.

“There’s so few of us, I’ll talk to young women and new entrants, as long as they’re happy to speak to me on my commute to work, because that’s the only time I can spare,” she says.

On the profession’s broader challenge – declining adviser numbers against rising demand –she supports affordable, scoped pathways but resists diluting what “qualified” means. The system is complex, literacy remains low, and people need help. But solutions, she argues, must respect the profession.

She guest-lectures, joins panels and helps newer advisers find employers who match their promises – because early disillusionment can drive talented people out altogether.

Thomas is also a mother of three in a household that does not slow down: weekends are a blur of hockey games, CrossFit sessions as a family. Her calendar is a logistical puzzle anchored by clear boundaries – a refusal to let work colonise weekends or holidays.

She uses volunteer hours to deliver financial literacy sessions to young athletes because it aligns with her skills and values. If she gives time, she wants it to matter.I n that sense, her practice and her life mirror each other.

She is building something rare in advice: a professional identity that does not ask clients to adapt to the adviser, but invites the right clients into a relationship built on trust, clarity and care.

Yes, there’s glitter – because Dawn Thomas loves it. But there is steel underneath.

James Dunn

James is an experienced senior journalist and editor of The Inside Network's publications.