Shawn Meade
Shawn Meade, a partner and senior wealth manager at Redwood, can trace his career path back to a Junior Achievement class in eighth grade at Blendon Middle School in Westerville, Ohio. There, Shawn learned about the stock market in a month-long game format and was hooked. From that point on, he knew he would be a “numbers guy.”
Shawn took two high school accounting classes which led him to major in accounting at The Ohio State University, where he graduated cum laude in 1994 from the honors accounting program.
The Ohio State experience also turned Shawn into a rabid college football fan with the personal goal of watching a college football game in every Division I stadium. Of course, as a Buckeye fan, his favorite game remains Ohio State’s win over Miami in the 2002 National Title game in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Upon graduation from Ohio State (where Shawn appropriately received his degree in the end zone of Ohio Stadium), Shawn married Nicole, his high school sweetheart, and moved to Atlanta to work with the global accounting firm Ernst & Young as an auditor. While at Ernst & Young, he became a Certified Public Accountant and later he would earn Certified Financial Planner™ while working as a wealth manager.
Shawn worked for Ernst & Young for about four years and then left to pursue a job in the corporate accounting world.
Around this time, Shawn met his future colleague Raj Chokshi while both were enrolled in Georgia State’s master’s program for financial planning, and the foundation for Redwood Wealth Management was formed.
Upon their graduation in 2001, jobs were scarce in the financial planning profession so the two men hung out their own shingle and started Redwood with one other partner and zero clients.
Throughout his journey, Shawn has never forgotten his experience with Junior Achievement and often volunteers to present the Junior Achievement curriculum at schools around Atlanta. Shawn also serves on the board of the Financial Planning Association of Georgia as its treasurer and also serves as treasurer for his neighborhood’s homeowner association.
In addition to his work with Junior Achievement, Shawn founded the Georgia State Financial Planning Alumni Club and participates with the Ernst & Young Atlanta Alumni Advisory Council.
Throughout his career, Shawn has adhered to a philosophy found in an Albert Einstein quote so appropriate for “a numbers guy”: Not everything that can be counted counts….and not everything that counts, can be counted.
Shawn lives in Canton with his wife, Nicole, and their two boys, Ryan and Kevin. Besides the football stadium dream, Shawn maintains one other travel goal with Nicole: Visit a different state every year for their anniversary, culminating with a trip to their honeymoon location, Bar Harbour, Maine, for their 50th wedding anniversary. For those keeping score, the Meades recently celebrated their 17th anniversary in Atlantic City and Cape May, New Jersey and are open to suggestions for a location for their 18th anniversay trip.
When Shawn is not meeting with clients or running the business, he enjoys traveling with his family, drinking wine, reading and watching his boys play sports.
