Robert Tyler Pearson

Financial advisor

HFG Trust

Age: 25

Current city of residence: Kennewick

Briefly describe your company:

At HFG Trust we believe in simplifying life for our clients. We have been offering personalized financial planning services and investment management services to the Tri-Cities community since 1983. This comes in many forms, including estate planning, tax planning, insurance analysis, retirement planning and investment management.

Briefly describe your job and what you do. Tell us how you got into it.

My job is to work with individuals, families and businesses to understand their goals. Once I understand the goals, objectives and values of a client, I can work with them to develop a plan to help them succeed in achieving what they desire. For some people it might be achieving an early retirement. While for others, it might be feeling confident that their loved ones will be taken care of when they are gone. The best part of my job is getting to know what makes people tick and working with them in a long-term relationship to help achieve goals. It brings a sense of pride to me to work alongside some of the great people in our community.

How long have you worked there?

 4 years – 5 this year!

Tell us about your work history.

My work history is a bit all over the place until I found what I’m doing now. When I turned 16, I began my first “real job” working for Dairy Queen on Highway 395. The summer going into my senior year of high school, I got a job as a commercial fisherman deck hand on a boat based out of Gig Harbor. I spent the next two summers working in southeast Alaska fishing for salmon. The summer after my freshman year in college, I worked as a pizza delivery driver for Domino’s. Covid made getting a job in Pullman hard for college students, so I just studied my sophomore year and then moved home to finish my degree online. That summer I worked for Benton County Mosquito Control, testing mosquitos for West Nile virus. At the tail end of my time with the county, I accepted a job with Community First Bank where I helped implement a new online banking software and then worked with clients and employees to train them on the new software. This was pivotal in my career because it is how I was able to get a job with HFG Trust as a wealth planner assisting several financial advisors. That is where I found my love for financial planning and learned the trade! Haven’t looked back!

What advice would you give to your younger self about achieving success?

It would all boil down to one thing: Listen to what your elders tell you. It is so easy as a teenager and young adult to think that you know more than your parents, mentors, bosses etc., but looking back I feel like I missed the point of a lot of good advice from those people. If you listen and think about what these people are recommending and still make decisions for yourself, I feel that it builds maturity and professionalism at a rate that will be massively beneficial to you. It also allows you to keep a lot of doors open for your future self and can help prevent you from making big mistakes.

Who are your role models – and why? Tell us what you learned from them. What do you consider your leadership style to be?

My biggest role models are my parents. I’m finally at the age where I realize that even the stuff I thought they were wrong about, they were right about. They are both successful in their own right but have such different traits that it has been a great experience for me to learn what they both do well and try to apply those skills to my own life.

My leadership style is a democratic/transformational. I am a huge proponent of collaborative team environments where decision-making works through a team. I believe it fosters quality relationships amongst team members and makes people feel that their input matters. Where transformational style works its way in is that both in the corporate and nonprofit worlds, I believe that the best teams are built on shared goals and outcomes. In other words, it is hard to build a team without a shared vision.

Tell us about your community involvement/community service:

I’m heavily involved with the Kiwanis Club of Kennewick and the Kennewick Kiwanis Foundation. I serve as a board member for both organizations.

I’ve also worked on the committee for the Eerkes Memorial Golf Classic for Kids which serves both the Boys & Girls Club of Benton Franklin Counties and Young Life. Last year we raised over $400,000 for the two charities.

The last three years I have also worked with B5 on setting up their original annual fundraiser which pushed them over their goal for the capital campaign allowing them to build their new building to serve refugee families in the Tri-Cities. Each of the three years we have raised over $100,000 for B5.

I have spent time coaching youth basketball at the sixth- and seventh-grade level for a local club.

What else should we know about you?

The last thing that you should know about me is that I look at everything I do in life with a “be a helper first” attitude. I’m a firm believer that if you do right by people, the world will do right by you. I take that attitude to my career, to the nonprofit boards I serve on, and to my personal life. It makes every day just a little bit better

Do you have family? Pets? Tell us about them.

At home it is my wife, Maleah, and I with our two dogs and a cat. Milo and Digby are both black lab/German Short Hair Pointer mixes and then there is Freddie, our cat!

How long have you lived in the Tri-Cities? If you didn’t grow up here, what brought you here?

I was born in the Tri-Cities and have lived here except for the two school years that I was in Pullman for college.

What’s your dream vacation?

Sweden and Norway

Planner or procrastinator?

Both? I love to plan things out but tend to procrastinate getting it done!

First car?

2006 Pontiac Grand Prix

Introvert or extrovert?

Extrovert

Favorite thing to do in Tri-Cities?

Golf and wine tasting

Text, email, phone call?

Phone call

What would people be most surprised to learn about you?

I grew up a huge University of Washington fan and went to Washington State University.

Favorite Tri-City restaurant?

Taverna Tagaris

Favorite day of the week?

Friday – work AND fun

Would you rather travel back in time or to the future?

Back in time