Merrill Lynch Advisor Recognized As Outstanding Business Leader

Melissa Spickler, Managing Director at Merrill Lynch and founder of the Spickler Wealth Management Group in , will be recognized as one of six Northwood University Outstanding Business Leaders.

The 35th Annual Outstanding Business Leader (OBL) Awards Gala will be held at 7:00 p.m. Saturday, February 7th, 2015, at The Breakers, Palm Beach, Florida. The gala is open to the public. Tickets are $375 per person. For high resolution photos, biographies, and individual press releases, please visit the: Outstanding Business Leader Online Newsroom .

As the founder of the Spickler Wealth Management Group and a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch, Missy Spickler built her team with the goal of providing individuals and businesses the same high-quality wealth management expertise that she’d expect to receive as a client.

Spickler believes that a commitment to excellence, integrity, a collaborative approach and dedicated work ethic are among the reasons that many clients have chosen to remain with her for several decades. An expert of the financial services industry, with more than three decades of accomplishments as a Merrill Lynch Financial Advisor, she founded The Spickler Group in 1980 and has since turned it into a team serving both individual and institutional accounts.

After graduating from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Law, Spickler became an undercover agent for the Michigan Attorney General. She then entered the financial services sector, joining Merrill Lynch in 1980, and today helps to motivate, advise, and guide women in transition, executives, businesses, retirees and entrepreneurs as they pursue their financial goals and aspirations.

While coaching and inspiring colleagues to provide clients with highly personalized and efficient services by listening attentively to their requests and addressing their needs, promptly, Spickler continues to fulfill her mission of helping customers identify needs they may not have realized while providing them with the financial tools to create and maintain the lives they desire.

A holder of the Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC) designation, Spickler is also a qualified Portfolio Manager who, in addition to providing traditional advice and guidance, can help clients pursue their objectives by building and managing her own personalized or defined strategies, which may incorporate individual stocks and bonds, Merrill Lynch model portfolios and third-party investment strategies.

Highly recognized within the industry for superior service, Spickler was named to Barron’s list of America’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisors and to Registered Rep’s Top 50 Wirehouse Women in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In 2014, Barron’s listed her among America’s 1200 Financial Advisors by State.

Regularly included in a variety of hard copy, television and digital publications she was recently featured on the cover of Barron’s magazine and in recent issues of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and Crain’s Detroit Business.

The executive director of the Detroit Area Chapter of the Women’s Exchange, Spickler has served a variety of leadership groups and was recently appointed to the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission.

Northwood University annually recognizes a select group of men and women for their business achievements and for their support and exemplary leadership of the communities in which they live and work. These individuals serve as role models for Northwood University students, all of whom are engaged in the study of business management, as they share anecdotes relating to the obstacles and challenges they encountered while on their personal road to business success, as well as remedies relating to how they overcame them.

In the 35 years since the program’s founding, more than 300 business leaders from more than 30 states and several countries, representing dozens of industries and fields of business expertise, have received the Outstanding Business Leader Award.