CAISSA Spotlight: Meet Kelly

For this month’s spotlight, we’re profiling our Founder and CEO Kelly S. Olson Pedersen, who founded CAISSA in 2009.

What gets you excited about your work?
I love identifying and taking all of the challenging puzzle pieces of a financial situation to create a vision for the client. What I’ve seen time and time again is that building a solid strategy for a client – one that takes all the potential challenges into account and aligns with their goals – can significantly improve their financial well-being. What I want to hear is that clients stop worrying about their finances and can sleep better at night.

What’s your favorite thing to do in Minnesota during the winter?
Leave! Our family likes to go to Florida to visit my mom and Disney World. This year we did start the boys in skiing here in Minnesota, so that has been fun. I’m looking forward to taking skiing trips with them to Colorado.

What is your role at CAISSA?
I manage our clients’ wealth and investments from the accumulation stage throughout the retirement phase. I focus on providing a clear plan to build and preserve wealth in a prudent manner by incorporating a personal wealth and investment strategy. I also serve as CAISSA’s Director of Investments, overseeing investment strategy and our on-site due diligence.

At CAISSA, our financial planners act as your personal CFO. We understand and manage the financial pieces on your board of life to create one consistent strategy aligned with your goals and unique situation.

Why financial services?
When my siblings and I were young and worked on the farm picking rocks and walking beans, we used the money we earned during the summer to buy our school clothes and other items for the year and would take a trip to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to shop. Growing up like that, it was a natural fit that we learned to budget and make our dollars work as hard as possible. I enjoyed the challenge and always gravitated to preserving wealth and planning for the future.

How do you pass the time when you’re not in the office?
My family and I spend time on the boat on Lake Minnetonka, playing sports with the boys and participating in as many outdoor activities as possible. We head to Okoboji, Iowa, every Fourth of July to boat and take in the fireworks.

What’s the best vacation you ever took?
Every trip to Europe has been amazing. I’ve been blessed to have been able to visit most countries in Western Europe, and France and Italy are my all-time favorites. I’m also looking forward to trips ahead as my children get older! We want to visit all of the U.S. national parks. We would also like to take the boys to a football game at every college in the Big Ten – it’d be a fun way to show them the options ahead of them in a few years!

What’s your favorite book you ever read?
I loved “24 Days,” which chronicles the 24 days leading up to the Enron collapse. It was fascinating.