Shaping Financial Futures With a Vision for Social Change
In Brief
Bill Stant is not your typical financial advisor. His insights into the securities markets and the insurance industry are those of a socialist critic of capitalism. He sees most national and global markets as arenas for institutionalized predator-prey relationships. Bill believes that the effects of this predation are best mitigated by the strict application of a fiduciary standard to his advisory services.
Bill Stant is 67 years old. As a child in the 1960s, he lived in Tokyo, Japan, for four years and Seoul, Korea, for one year. This was the first major formative experience of his life. Returning to the U.S. and attending high school in the 1970s, he became a school troublemaker. He wrote a column for the school newspaper called “Willy’s Words,” in which he criticized the Vietnam War and dug up dirt on his high school principal’s disciplinary practices. The principal, Oliver Warner, was known to the students as “Jolly Olly.”
The Indiana State Board of Education was happy to make an exception and allow Bill to graduate after just three years of high school. They didn’t want troublemakers disrupting the educational process. This was a fateful decision.
Bill wasn’t ready for college. So instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years, serving from March 7, 1975, until March 7, 1978, when he received an honorable discharge. He was trained to be a prison-of-war interrogator and a Spanish linguist. This was the second formative experience of Bill’s life.
While enlisted in the Army, Bill reached the rank of Specialist-5, the technical equivalent of a Staff Sergeant. Bill’s last assignment in the Army was temporary duty at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. He was asked to translate a lengthy document sent to the U.S. from the new military dictatorship in Argentina.
Bill didn’t know it at the time, but he was being provided with a real-time window into an episode in Argentine history more widely known as “the dirty war against the left.” This sparked an interest in Latin American history and politics, which Bill pursued at Indiana University, Bloomington, after his army service.
Between completing a master’s degree in Latin American Studies at Indiana University in 1984 and beginning doctoral studies in Political Science at Loyola University Chicago, Bill travelled to the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where he was employed as a paralegal volunteer at Proyecto Libertad in Harlingen, Texas. He worked with Central American refugees who entered the U.S. illegally, explaining refugee rights and assisting with applications for political asylum.
Bill returned to Indiana to teach a class in Latin American History in the 1985 winter trimester at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.
This inspired an interest in pursuing a doctorate. Bill moved to Chicago in 1986 and enrolled in Loyola University’s doctoral program in Political Science. While pursuing his doctorate, Bill taught Introduction to Political Theory, Modern Political Thought, and Introduction to American Politics. Bill also taught classes at College of St. Francis in Joliet and St. Xavier University on Chicago’s south side.
Family needs intervened in 1995 and called Bill and his partner back to Indiana, where his parents needed assistance managing their affairs. Bill’s career in academia ended with a 500-page dissertation manuscript in need of revisions that were never made. Bill’s father passed away shortly after Bill arrived back in Brown County, Indiana. His father left behind an insurance practice that did business as “L. B. Stant and Associates.”
Bill became an Indiana Life and Health Insurance Agent and a Securities Registered Representative in June 1996. In 2000, Bill began shifting the focus of his business to Socially Responsible Investing. In 2015, Bill and several other Financial West Group/Progressive Asset Management advisors, led by Richard Torgerson, founded SharePower Responsible Investing, Inc.™ and moved their businesses to Cambridge Investment Research, Inc.
In addition to Socially Responsible Investing, Bill specializes in long-term care planning. He maintains his certification to offer Indiana Partnership long-term care insurance. His services also include portfolio design, management, and retirement income planning.
Bill lives in Nashville, Indiana, and works with clients mostly located in Bloomington, Indiana. He has served on the Boards of Directors of the Brown County Chamber of Commerce and Brown County Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and served as a volunteer on the Finance and Investment Committee of the Brown County Community Foundation.
Bill and his partner, Nancy Goddard, married in 1980 and raised two beautiful daughters. They are now proud grandparents. When he’s not designing and managing investment portfolios, Bill enjoys building and flying RC model aircraft, reading science fiction and political theory (which often overlap), bird watching, and catching up on the news via late-night comedy shows on YouTube.