Soon after Debbie Jorgensen joined Merrill Lynch as a broker in 1984, she became one of the first two Merrill employees to earn a designation as a Certified Financial Planner. “The whole idea that you don’t start investing for a client until you understand balance sheets and cash flow and gather financial documents—I loved it, but people thought I was out of my mind,” says Jorgensen, who had graduated from Stanford University with a degree in economics and was 23 at the time. “Now, of course, Merrill encourages people to…
