Susan Austin, MBA, CDFA®

Financial Neutral, Mediator
SMBA LLC

Iowa 50266

515-554-4272 | Email

​Susan Austin is an independent CDFA®. Through life’s twists and turns, she believes all roads have led to her current CDFA® practice. She is humbled each time she is invited to walk with a couple through one of the most life-changing and difficult transitions most will ever make. Her calm and understanding demeaner, along with rational and realistic financial projections, and most importantly information and education, are peppered with creativity and sometimes “outside-the-box” thinking. She credits this along with the collaborative process (team approach) to the success she’s seen with couples in collaborative divorce. Ultimately, her goal is to provide couples the confidence and clarity to make the many emotional, yet necessary, financial decisions needed to get to the other side.

Susan’s CDFA® practice includes working as a financial neutral with both spouses together in collaborative divorce. However, when necessary, she will work as an advocate for one party usually in a mediated or litigated divorce process.

She is a board member and frequent financial presenter at Second Saturday® Des Moines monthly workshops. She also teaches introductory courses for the ACA (Angel Capital Association).

Susan’s background in Economics, Quantitative Methods and an MBA in Finance have afforded her a wide and varied career which began in corporate finance, transitioned to owning and operating a small business, assisting with the startup of two small non-profits, and later to managing an early-stage private equity group. Here and there she’s taken time off to recharge, volunteer, and travel.

In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, hiking, photography, and spending time with her two grown children, one in Colorado and one in D.C.