What About Bob? An inside look at Bob Goss
Financial Planning; page 1 1Sep99
By Eva Marer

Bob Goss, the new Certified Financial Planner Board President, recently addressed the CFP membership in an effort to appease an irate audience over their intense displeasure with the new entry-level designation. Fellow board members Harold Evensky and Patti Houlihan also spoke to the assembled crowd at the Adam's Mark hotel in Dallas, Texas.

Was there a fire?" asked one man, "Why not give us some facts before you make a decision that directly affects our livelihoods?" Another licensee asserted, "CFP Lite is a hoax on the public!" to which was added, "and a hoax on the CFP community!"

Bob Goss is known as an enigmatic and easily misunderstood man. Goss, a 56-year-old mild-mannered Mormon, is married with eight children. He has overcome many obstacles growing up in poverty after the death of his alcoholic father at the time he was l2. Speaking of his father Goss says, "He was totally unprepared for his own death, and had no insurance whatsoever."

Goss worked his way through a political science degree from the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He later attended BYU in Provo where he completed his master's degree in public administration. He returned to New York to continue his education at the Graduate School of Publice Affairs and received a law degree from Georgetown Law Center in 1977.

Goss has earned the respect and admiration of his collegues throughout his professional life. Tom Potts, a former board member, led the search that hired Goss as President of the CFP Board. "We drew up a list of 2l characteristics that we felt the chief staff person should have," said Potts adding that Goss had l9 of them. "Bob Goss is a tremedous study of self-composure," says Potts.

"I'm passionate about all Americans receiving the benefits of financial planning," Goss said. "Imagine if medical care was confined to the affluent, or if justice for all meant justice only for the wealthy." Many opponents call the new entry-level designation, CFP Lite. Goss discredits this thinking as an outmoted boutique-financial planning practice that focuses only on high-net-worth clients.

"We're engaged in a cause that's monumentally important to Americans of all backgrounds," Goss said. With all of the outrage being hurled at him, Goss is not about to back down. "You live in a glass house," he said under scrutiny. Still, "I'm a believer."