MEGAN DEEKS, Senior Wealth Advisor, The Deeks Financial Group, CIBC Wood Gundy, Toronto, Ontario
- CARMEN MORGAN
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
MEGAN DEEKS
"Theatre threw me into the deep end of every human emotion. That's exactly what lets me hold a client's hand through the biggest financial decisions of their life."
There was no telling how Megan’s career in theatre would inform her ways in helping people manage their money.
At Queen's University, where Megan earned an Honours BA, she spent her nights the way the most committed drama students do, in her room running lines. After her degree, she and five of her closest friends formed a comedy troupe, were nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award, and were even developing a pilot. When they parted ways to pursue new careers, they were already stage ready. One became a lawyer, the others went on to become producers, actors, directors and writers. And Megan Deeks, daughter of a Toronto Investment Advisor, went to join her father's practice.
"Theatre and comedy were not going to be my life's path," she says. But that part of her lives on. Nearly two decades into a career in wealth management, Megan, Senior Wealth Advisor with The Deeks Financial Group, is convinced that the years she spent on stage are precisely what make her good at this job.
"The beauty of the arts program at Queen's was that I wasn't just getting my BA — I was acting, performing, being thrown into the deep end of every single emotion across the spectrum," she says. "Honing the craft, for me, was learning that whole gamut of human emotion and interaction. And that turned out to be an amazing through line to what I do now."
Megan grew up in midtown Toronto in a household where finance was, as she puts it, "in my blood and my bones." Her father, John Deeks, built a wealth management practice over more than 50 years, and Megan joined him at CIBC Wood Gundy to form The Deeks Financial Group in 2010. The plan was a long, gentle handover — father and daughter working side by side for years.
However, that plan changed when her father's health declined and he had to step back sooner than anyone expected. “I was catapulted into the hot seat," says Megan. “The years I had already spent as his junior advisor taught me what it meant to lead a successful practice, and thankfully, Brenda Sochaski, my dad’s longtime assistant was there to steady the transition.”
The handover to clients was choreographed as carefully as any stage transition. The goal was to give clients time to trust that she would preserve what her father built. "His expectation was for me to thrive,” says Megan, “I think I'm doing exactly what he would want me to do.” Megan has turned her father’s 100M portfolio into a $430M+ today, with over 200 client households.
Some of those client relationships now run five and six generations deep. "That's a real strength of the business, it was a strength of my dad's,” says Megan, “and I think it's a strength of mine—being able to relate to people who grew up in very different generations, with very different relationships with their money.”
An empathy instinct and “people first, products second” approach shapes how Megan advises. Where an earlier generation of Advisors proved their worth by choosing what to buy and sell, she sees her role differently. "I've become the quarterback, the director of the show," she says. "I can open the door to an estate planner, review your insurance, make sure your charitable giving is handled. My job is to get you to a place where you feel comfortable making the decision." The financial vehicles, including the TFSAs, RESPs and trusts, are just that: vehicles. "I like to strip it down to the purpose of those vehicles—are they doing what they need to do for you, in your scenario. Let's watch your grandchild go to Queen's. Let's make a trust so they can go to summer camp. And you get to watch it all come to into reality."
One family captured everything she loves about the work. Grandparents wanted to give each of their eight grandchildren a meaningful gift. “They did not want it to be a ‘here's money, off you go into the world, goodbye’,” explains Megan. “We helped them host a lunch where the grandchildren learned together what they were receiving, then we sat with each one individually to open an account and explain how it worked. Their reactions ranged from ‘can we talk about crypto?’ to a quiet nervousness. Years later, those grandchildren are Megan’s clients. "I got to watch my clients give a beautiful gift and now, I’ve built a meaningful relationship with every one of their kids and grandchildren." It's the same philosophy behind a piece of advice her father gave her, which she now passes onto clients tempted to over-control their wealth: "Don't rule from the grave."
It's no accident that Megan staffs her practice with people who think the way she does. "Theatre kids are the hardest-working people on the face of the planet," she says. "I hire people who aren't your norm. A finance degree is great, but this work is about human connection, and people from the arts will figure the rest out." Her associate, Patrick David, is exactly that hire: the two met cochairing a theatre company board, where she watched his emotional intelligence at work for five years before recruiting him. Her team also includes client associates Michael Zimmerman and Giuliana Greco.
Megan has never really left the theatre. She served as chair and co-chair of the board of The Musical Stage Company, Canada's largest charitable musical-theatre organization, which develops and premieres new Canadian musicals. She steered it through the upheavals of the pandemic and two artistic-director transitions, and is stepping down this year having, she hopes, honoured what her family calls the "campsite rule": leave the place better than you found it.
If Megan has a mission beyond her clients, it's persuading more women that this career is theirs for the taking. The wealth set to flow to women over the coming decades is enormous and yet, by her count, there might be fewer women in the industry now than when her predecessors came up.
"Women deal well with women, and we refer so well," she says. She's quick to add that her own path hasn't been a fight. “The beauty of this industry is the autonomy. It has allowed me to attend my children's soccer games and grow my career at the same time.
‘Our job is to help people live lives they can be proud of’—That was the lesson her father modelled when he let Megan find her own way to his profession rather than pushing her toward it. “The numbers and the accounts are how you get there,” says Megan, “but the rest, the listening, the empathy, the holding of hands through life's biggest decisions, those are skills and gifts from my theatre days.”
Megan Deeks, CIM®
Senior Wealth Advisor
CIBC Wood Gundy | Private Wealth Management
The Deeks Financial Group
181 Bay Street, Suite 600
Toronto, Ontario M5J 2T3
Tel: 416-594-8696 | Cell: 416-735-6913
Carmen Morgan is a skilled business writer and storyteller, collaborating with business owners and executives to tell their stories and share perspectives on growth and success, as well as perseverance and adversity. Over two decades she has refined her interview, writing and editing skills to capture the nuggets and captivating details that engage readers and make a story memorable.