Michelle Price is the Founder and Managing Principal of Price Capital.

She has BS and MS degrees from Rice and Stanford Universities in Electrical Engineering. She used her math and analysis skills to work in quantitative strategies and portfolio risk analysis for over a decade at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup before joining Edward Jones in 2007.

Edward Jones didn’t have a Manhattan office, and didn’t have a precedent for growing a business in a city like Manhattan. Michelle took on that challenge, and started building a practice at Edward Jones just prior to the last global recession.

By February 2008, she earned enough revenue to open an office in Penn Plaza in New York City. She appeared on ABC News, PBS’ Nightly Business Report, and in the New York Times. Business grew quickly in three years, and during the greatest recession of our generation!

It was during the beginning stages of the recession while working as a broker that Michelle became frustrated. Brokers work on commission, and need to almost continuously buy and sell investments in order to earn a living.

She didn’t like the conflict of interest of buying clients into the worst recession of our generation until the market showed better signs of recovery. She also enjoyed giving overall financial advice, which normally isn’t what brokers are paid to do.

The recession also shifted investor preferences. Investors began to learn about and prefer independent fee-only advisors instead of commissioned brokers. Industry studies also showed investors wanted to be much more involved in the investment process than before 2008, but also wanted unbiased professional advice after being burned when the market collapsed.

Brokers — which is what you usually find at the large investment companies — could not switch to a fee-only model without costly retraining and restructuring. As a result, Michelle decided to launch an independent fee-only registered investment advisory firm in 2010 that gave investors what they wanted, as well as the transparency and service that they deserved. She consulted at buy-side firms including Goldman Sachs and PIMCO to fund growing her business.

Today, Price Capital leads the registered investment advisory field in providing the online do-it-yourself experience that investors like, plus the support of a friendly and experienced advisor with no surprise costly fees. Clients get a Mint.com-style platform to monitor their complete net worth, educational videos and articles, access to forums, and the feeling of not being alone in their journey to improve their finances.

At times, Michelle feels like David battling against the Goliath brokerage industry. But she believes that the service that Price Capital provides positively impacts her clients’ lives at a time when planning and how to invest aren’t understood (but need to be).

Michelle also has two black belts, and trained twice with the Korean Olympic team. If that doesn’t make her fit to battle the Goliaths, then nothing does!

Visit http://www.pricecapitalcorp.com/about-us for more information.