Our Story is Our Motto
"People Do Not Care About Your Knowledge When You Do Not Care About Being Their Advocate."
Motto: "non curat scientia cum advocatus non curat."
Emergent Financial Group was formed in the abstract on September 7th 2003. After I woke up from a month long comma bearded and feeling the sensation of small potatoes growing in my mouth. Having no sensation in my legs, I asked my parents why I couldn't feel my feet, and was told that I was paralyzed from the nipple line down and would be in a wheelchair for the remainder of my life. I had a dream that my girlfriend, Lauren Tonini, had cuddled me while I was in a comma so I asked my parents if I could see Lauren. My father said "she passed away." I told him that this was impossible, because she was cuddling me throughout the comma, and I knew that she had recently been next to me while I was resuscitated through three cardiac arrests, defibrillations and multiple encounters with death. My father looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "that's so beautiful, but she is dead." I began crying and pinched myself multiple times over the coming days. I pinched myself so hard that I drew blood. This is when I knew that this was not another lucid dream in a sequence of dreams that I had been experiencing throughout the duration of the coma. This was real! I was paralyzed. I lost the love of my life, and for all intents and purposes, my life would be very different if not morose.
Over the coming months, my family and I had become acquainted with the devastating affects and suffering, which accompanies major tragedies. The question which burdened my actions was the following: our lives were once pristine, now were they broken? Upon endless consideration, I understood that my life would be very different. I understood that my life would be better and more fulfilling, because I discovered that life eventually breaks all of us. For the first time in my life, I became inciteful. Most people subconsciously pass-on because they lose their will to live. Once this concept is fully appreciated, its relationship to life and how this incite governs the lives of people, allows an individual to empathize with the pain and frustration experienced by other people as they survive the challenges associated with the gift of life. Additionally, I realized that I grew up in the bed of an ivory tower. Experiencing tragedy taught me how to relate to people, as some people experience many hardships while others experience few. However to become consumed by tragedy, or to measure it against other people's is immaterial, because tragedy is relevant to the victim who's life it has challenged. We will all become disabled, provided that we live long enough. If we are fortunate, we will all share the experience of the people that we love surrendering the gift of life, and passing on. At the age of 20, the tragic experiences in my life refined me with wisdom. My mobility had been reduced considerably, but my wisdom had been enhanced considerably. As I remained unbreakable against the forces in life who eventually break everyone; thus indiscriminately so. I was forced to reinvent myself. Reinventing myself replaced a man who was once shallow with a man of deep understanding. Using this new gift of wisdom, I decided to become an advocate for people, because the challenges that I had overcome in life nearly broke my spirit and will to live. Intellectually, there are only a few behaviors, which separate humans from higher order beasts and animals: The use of tools, advocacy, altruism, empathy and knowledge. Emphasizing the importance of these behaviors as it relates to improving civilization, I created a motto, which defines the way that we think about pensions, wealth management and financial planning: "non curat scientia cum advocatus non curat." In Latin: People do not care about your knowledge when you do not care about being their advocate. Following this motto, I resolved to do three things: overcome a traumatic brain injury, regain my ability to walk, and build a firm that would help businesses and individuals financially plan for disabilities, the probability of untimely death, retirement, and overwhelming insurance costs. In my family, these elements were all managed well. However, they were not managed exceptionally. Employing average or above average financial planning ruined the financial position of my family, because we were overcome by a series of exceptionally tragic circumstances. Having accomplished my first two goals against all odds. I worked as an associate in many roles within the financial services industry including: private equity, oil and gas, sales and trading, hedge funds, commodities, ETFs, third party administration, insurance, wills, pensions, trusts and wealth management. I learned everything that I could to understand financial services within a panoramic context. It was my understanding that the financial services industry was unnecessarily specialized in many areas. Therefore, my family would've been protected financially if they had access to a firm that offered exceptionally robust, diverse and sophisticated knowledge. As I acquired more knowledge, I learned that a wealth management and benefits consulting firm could only understand financial planning around traumatic circumstances to the extent that they had experience surviving traumatic circumstances. As I reflected on my journey, I uniquely understood that overcoming adversity both physical, economic and otherwise was my talent. Many cannot compete and manage their client's wealth through events which have created ripples of adversity in their lives, because we do not experience these adversities early enough in life, while departing from these adversities with our mental faculties intact. While applying the knowledge gleaned and my understanding of the financial system to wealth management, insurance, benefits and pensions I realized that my survival was my fortune. This was a somewhat brutish realization, although it was inciteful and worthy of action. I realized that overcoming adverse financial and economic circumstance was an exceptional tool for preserving wealth under the most adverse conditions. Also, I had the unique experience required to understand all of the variable components of trauma and how finances respond in trauma. I understood that if a service offering existed at the time that ripples of trauma cast devastation on my life, its commitment to advocacy, altruism and customer service would have been successful in protecting the finances of my family. If this service were offered and available in the marketplace. As my family faced challenges that included the most confounding issues in: medicine, finance, insurance, physical therapy, psychology, psychiatry, emotional maturity, and the unexpected loss of altruism and advocacy in a modern time of depersonalization. I decided that it was essential to offer these services, because they are among the most valuable components in determining the success of businesses and individuals. If a benefits consulting firm, specialized wealth management firm, and insurance agency can successful navigate the worst of times, logically, this firm will also successfully navigate both the best of times, and the most volatile of times.
Sincerely,
Justin M. Campagna
Managing Member and Chief Operating Officer
Emergent Financial Group, LLC
