Alison Rooney on Relationship Capital

For Alison Rooney, leadership begins with a small but revealing habit. At the end of nearly every meeting, she asks the same question: What can I do to help?

It’s a simple gesture, but also a philosophy. Rooney believes that the most effective leaders — and the most effective businesses — are built not only on expertise but on the experience people have when working together. Over the course of her career, she has become convinced that one of the most powerful professional advantages is simply being someone other people want to work with.

Rooney, Managing Director and Head of Advisor and Team Development at Morgan Stanley, was named an Innovator in the Morgan Stanley MAKERS Class of 2026. To her, the recognition reflects years spent thinking about how the financial advice industry is evolving and what will matter most as it continues to change. The future, she believes, will depend just as much on human relationships as it does on new tools. That belief has roots that stretch back long before her career in wealth management.

Win With Presence

Growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rooney spent much of her childhood playing competitive tennis. By the time she was twelve, she was already working with a sports psychologist, learning techniques like visualization and mental rehearsal to prepare for matches.

Relating that experience to her business career, Rooney explains, “You have to identify what you’re trying to accomplish, visualize the steps of how it’s going to play out, and really believe it's going to happen.”

At the same time, Rooney noticed something about herself that felt just as important as winning. She cared deeply about how people experienced her presence. “I was just as obsessed with getting the sportsmanship award as I was with winning the tournament,” she laughs. 

Family Mantras

This mentality has familial roots. Rooney has a large family, with both of her parents being one of eight children, and with two brothers herself. Several family mantras have stuck with her over time and helped shape her professional journey. “Whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve” and the poem “It Couldn’t Be Done” are both on her desk to remind her daily to dream big and believe it will come true. Separately, her grandfather, a successful businessman, always encouraged listening, often stating, “nobody learned anything while talking.” He inspired Rooney to become acutely attuned to the needs and perspectives of those around her, and to the realization that influence comes through strong relationship management.

“There’s a real power in being a pleasure to work with,” Rooney says.

That idea stayed with Rooney as she moved through school. After attending boarding school in New Jersey — a formative experience that pushed her independence and confidence — she went on to study applied psychology and human behavior at Boston College. At one point, she even considered becoming a therapist. Though she ultimately chose a different path, her fascination with people and relationships never disappeared.

In fact, this interest directly relates to her work in helping guide advisors to quality advice. She shared, “humans are biologically wired to reciprocate value. If you provide a high-quality human experience first, it creates a psychological pull that makes the implementation of your advice a natural next step.” Advice, she explains, is also not a transaction. “Good advice can fail not because it’s wrong, but because the recipient doesn’t feel safe enough to change. Designing for psychological safety through emotional intelligence and responsiveness is a form of innovation in human behavior.”

Embracing Risks

Rooney’s career began at Dow Jones, where she worked in Human Resources before joining Barron’s Wealth and Asset Management division, which produced conferences and rankings for top financial advisors. It was there that she met Sterling Shea, the executive who would become one of the most influential mentors of her career. At first, Rooney was focused on coordinating speakers for the conferences. But she quickly became fascinated by the industry itself, studying how successful advisors built their businesses and how the broader wealth management landscape was changing.

Her curiosity and work ethic soon created opportunities.  As colleagues took on new opportunities, Rooney stepped forward and told Shea she believed she could take on the roles.

Her initiative proved pivotal. It led to a growing role in shaping industry conversations and building wealth management relationships. Over time, Rooney became known not just for organizing speakers, but for the insights she gathered from speaking with top financial advisors and wealth management firms around the world.

The true turning point came when she took the risk of getting on stage herself. While at dinner with Shea and a financial advisor, the conversation turned to an upcoming Barron’s event featuring Venus Williams. It was suggested that Rooney should conduct the interview. Her immediate reaction was no, but she ultimately decided to take the risk.

The interview was her first major appearance on stage, and it changed the trajectory of her career.

From there, Rooney kept saying yes. Even when early experiences didn’t go well — even when she felt out of place — she continued to push herself. Over time, repetition built confidence. And those moments of visibility became a defining part of how she established herself within the industry.

The Importance of Relationship Capital

In 2021, Rooney joined Morgan Stanley. By then, she had spent years studying top-performing advisors and the trends shaping their businesses. She began helping advisors think strategically about growth, leadership and the future of the profession. In recent years, that work has evolved into helping teams understand how artificial intelligence will reshape their businesses.

Rooney sees enormous potential in the latest technology, particularly in how it can improve efficiency and access to information. She also believes it is forcing the industry to continue to transform its core value proposition. Investment information has been steadily commoditizing for years and AI will further accelerate that process. The main differentiator now, she argues, is the advisor’s ability to build trust and guide clients through complex life decisions at scale.

In other words, the future of wealth management may depend even more heavily on the qualities Rooney has emphasized throughout her career: Curiosity, responsiveness and genuine human connection.

In 2025, Rooney was named a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, just two weeks before she had her son. Today, she leads a large team and spends much of her time thinking about how to create opportunities for others. Rooney’s career and life experiences continue to shape her approach to leadership and motherhood — one influenced by mentors who made space for her to step forward and encouraged risk-taking, and a family that modeled what true success looks like.

For Rooney, the idea of innovation extends beyond new tools or systems. It also includes how people collaborate, communicate and build trust. “Technology will keep changing. The only sustainable advantage is investing in people and relationships.”