For TROY alumnus Scott Fain (’09, ’10), TROY means opportunity—opportunity to reassess life and career goals; opportunity to help take care of family while earning a degree that matters; opportunity to build on one degree while pursing another; opportunity to launch a steady career.

Today, Fain is a successful, driven wealth advisor for CapSouth Wealth Management and has spent almost 10 years within the company, but he’ll tell you it took loss and determination to get to where he is today.

Starting his collegiate academic career as a poultry science major from 2004 to 2005, Fain found himself maintaining high grades but unsure of his area of study. In late 2005, the unexpected weight of financial and personal challenges began weighing on his mind. Soon after this time, Fain found out about the failing health of his grandfather, and decided to step away from academics all together in order to move to Dothan, find work and join his mother’s family in taking care of their patriarch.

“My grandfather (my mom’s father) had been deaf for years, and now due to his condition, was unable to speak or communicate at all,” he said. “We all took turns staying with him around the clock.”

Fain said during that time, he began talking with family members about his next steps—professionally and academically. Two-thousand and six turned out to be a year of heartache for Fain as he lost three grandparents over the course of the year. However, 2006 also served as a year of new beginnings for the young man as he prepared to begin courses at TROY’s Dothan Campus.

“That fall, I started at TROY Dothan,” he said. “It was exactly what I needed. TROY allowed me to work, to live with my mom and to attend school. I decided to major in marketing at that time because it was the most general thing I could think of, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my career at that point. … I took some online classes, as well. I enjoyed the smaller class sizes and knowing the professors. There are key professors that stick out in my mind that I felt like I knew. They made classes enjoyable.”

Fain graduated with his marketing degree in 2009, right in the middle of the nation’s recession. But because of some key conversations with his aunt, he decided to get another degree from the AACSB-accredited Sorrell College of Business.

“At that time, I wanted to major in finance and keep going. But my aunt talked me into majoring in accounting because of the number of jobs that would be available for me,” he said. “So, I finished that degree in May 2010 due to the overlap in the programs.”

While working on finishing his second degree, Fain began working at CapSouth Wealth Management in January 2010 as an accounting and marketing manager. “Six months in, they reorganized the company and promoted me to business manager,” he said. “Working closely with the president of the company, I soon began taking on additional roles and moving into other areas. For several years, I specialized in the areas of advanced planning (which includes insurance and estate planning and financial planning). I got licensed on the investment side in 2016 and became a wealth advisor.”

While Fain began his career with CapSouth in Dothan, he is now living in Atlanta where he works primarily out of the company’s McDonough and Midtown Atlanta offices. “A few days a month I’m still down in Dothan meeting with clients,” he said.

With family being such an important part of his own life, Fain said one of his favorite things about being a wealth advisor is helping people plan to provide and care for their own families. “I love helping give my clients peace of mind,” he said. “We look at the values and long-term goals and objectives of our clients and we build a plan around that. … You’re not just working for that client, but for their children and their grandchildren, as well. … Money is just a tool to help accomplish what is really important to them—spending time with family, supporting charitable causes, providing for their children—important things like that.”

Fain said his TROY degrees have helped prepare him to take on new opportunities with confidence. “I felt as prepared as I could have felt when beginning my career,” he said.

Fain said CapSouth President Donald Bolden has also played a major mentoring role within his life and career. “He’s expanded my horizons of what I could be, and he’s pushed and driven me through his strong expectations,” he said.

“TROY gave me the foundation to be able to be capable of learning and meeting his expectations and growing. You have to have the capacity. Many jobs will require a college degree. They want to know that you can complete something and be successful, and that you are able to learn.”