2021 Men of the Year: Chuck Dow

Chuck Dow signaled a big job shift this spring when he launched a new financial planning office for St. Louis-based Synergy Wealth Solutions Inc.

“I made a difficult decision to leave the firm I had been with for nearly eight years and step out in faith to start a new office,” says Dow, who previously worked in the market as a financial adviser for Northwestern Mutual.

Since joining Synergy Wealth Solutions, Dow has led the local office in executing a lease for space on East Chestnut Expressway in the Frisco Building, hiring a full-time recruiting director and bringing on six full-time advisers. 

Synergy Wealth Solutions manages more than $7 billion in assets companywide, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. Locally, Dow and team are working to gain a foothold, but he has large plans in mind.

“My vision is that Synergy Wealth Solutions becomes a leading wealth management firm in southwest Missouri,” Dow says. “In turn, we can have an incredible economic impact on our area by serving our clients well and helping them achieve financial security.”

The Springfield location is the first district office outside of St. Louis and Kansas City, says Dow, and he’s now utilizing his leadership role to serve as a mentor for other advisers.

One of Synergy Wealth Solutions’ newest advisers, Chris Thomas, is on his way to earning Rookie of the Year honors for the regional firm under Dow’s tutelage, he says.

“One of my favorite parts of being in a leadership role in the financial services world is coaching and development. Nothing gets me more excited than to help someone start at the very beginning and build a business and a career from the ground up and begin to have success,” Dow says.

Beyond work hours, Dow puts his philanthropic heart to use and encourages his employees to do the same.

Dow is the founder of the Borrow My Angels nonprofit, which works to increase access to mental health care services and streamline the process of helping those in need.

The concept was based on a song Dow wrote to his sister in 2010, when “she was at one of her lowest points in her battle with mental illness and depression,” he says.

“She and I discussed starting a nonprofit as early as 2011 but were never able to get it launched while she was alive,” Dow says. “After she passed in 2014, it took a couple years to get going, but as of today we are a fully functional 501(c)(3) with a board of 11 members and an additional fundraising board of nine members.”

Additionally, Dow has been a Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce ambassador since 2015, a “big” for Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks since 2014 and a member of its board since 2019, and a board member for the Springfield Regional Arts Council since 2018. He’s a graduate of Leadership Springfield’s Signature Class 38.

While participating in Leadership Springfield, Dow says he was especially impacted by seeing The Milly Project, a performing arts piece that tells the story of Springfield’s Milly Sawyers, an enslaved woman who won her freedom in 1836.

“A small group of us were so moved that we coordinated a team to help The Milly Project in creating a new logo to amplify her story,” Dow says.