Penny Pennington

Penny Pennington
Penny Pennington, Managing Partner, Edward Jones Investments
Penny Pennington
Born	24 10, 1963
Birthplace	Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Businesswoman
Title	Managing Partner of Edward Jones Investments
Known for	Managing Partner of Edward Jones
Education	Northwestern University (MBA)
Spouse(s)	Mike Fidler
Children	2

'Penny Pennington (born October 24, 1963) is an American businesswoman who has served as the managing partner of Edward Jones Investments since January 2019. In this role, she leads one of the largest financial services firms in the United States, a company that serves approximately 9 million clients and manages roughly $2.2 trillion in assets. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Pennington rose through the ranks of Edward Jones over more than two decades, holding leadership positions in branch development, training, and firm strategy before being named to succeed Jim Weddle as managing partner in 2018. Her tenure has been defined by efforts to broaden Edward Jones's services beyond its traditional brokerage model into financial planning, banking, and holistic wealth management. Pennington has been recognized as one of the most powerful women in American finance, appearing on Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women list and ranking fourth on American Bankers 2025 list of the Most Powerful Women in Finance. She is a member of the Business Roundtable and has been active in civic and philanthropic organizations in the St. Louis metropolitan area, where Edward Jones is headquartered.

Early Life

Penny Pennington was born on October 24, 1963, in Nashville, Tennessee. Details about her upbringing and family background prior to her higher education are limited in publicly available sources. She grew up in the southern United States before pursuing her undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia.

Education

Pennington earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia. She later obtained a Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, one of the most selective graduate business programs in the United States. Her educational background provided a foundation in both the liberal arts and advanced business strategy that would inform her subsequent career in financial services.

Career

Early Career at Edward Jones

Pennington joined Edward Jones and built her career within the firm over a period spanning more than two decades. She began as a financial advisor, working directly with clients in the firm's distinctive branch-office model, which emphasizes individual offices staffed by a single financial advisor and a branch office administrator in communities across North America. This ground-level experience gave Pennington direct knowledge of the firm's core client relationships and its decentralized operating structure.

Over time, Pennington moved into progressively senior leadership roles within the firm. She held positions in branch development and was involved in the training and professional development of Edward Jones's large network of financial advisors. These roles positioned her as a leader who understood both the front-line advisory business and the organizational infrastructure that supported it.

Appointment as Managing Partner

On May 8, 2018, Edward Jones announced that Pennington had been selected to succeed Jim Weddle as the firm's managing partner, effective January 1, 2019. The announcement was reported by The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other major financial and business publications, reflecting the significance of the leadership transition at one of America's largest brokerage firms.

Edward Jones operates as a limited partnership, a structure in which the managing partner serves as the firm's chief executive. The managing partner position carries broad authority over the firm's strategic direction, operations, and culture. Pennington became only the second woman to lead a major U.S. brokerage firm in such a capacity, a fact noted in coverage of her appointment.

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time of her appointment, Pennington indicated that "there are many more chapters to be written" for the firm, signaling her intention to guide Edward Jones through a period of evolution and growth while maintaining the firm's established values. Barron's reported that Pennington's initial plan for the firm emphasized continuity with its existing strategy while preparing for changes in the financial services landscape.

Wealthmanagement.com named Pennington one of its "Ten to Watch" for 2019, citing her role in leading Edward Jones into a new era.

Leadership and Strategic Direction

Under Pennington's leadership, Edward Jones has pursued a strategic transformation aimed at broadening the firm's service offerings beyond its traditional brokerage and investment model. American Banker reported in 2025 that Pennington has led a shift toward financial-planning advice and banking services, with the goal of accelerating the firm's growth. This represents a significant evolution for a company historically identified with its network of individual financial advisors serving Main Street investors in communities across the United States and Canada.

By 2025, Edward Jones served approximately 9 million clients and had assets under care of roughly $2.2 trillion, according to the Business Roundtable's membership profile of Pennington. These figures reflect the scale of the firm she oversees and the breadth of its client base.

Pennington has articulated a vision for Edward Jones that emphasizes what she has described as "interdependence" — a model in which individual financial advisors operate with entrepreneurial ownership while benefiting from the scale, resources, and shared infrastructure of the broader partnership. In a December 2025 interview with AdvisorHub, Pennington discussed the firm's consistent investments intended to allow employees to grow and prosper, and the role of interdependence in the firm's strategy. In a subsequent AdvisorHub feature, she elaborated on why Edward Jones was "betting on interdependence, scale, and advisor ownership," framing the partnership model as a competitive advantage at a time when other wealth management firms were consolidating or shifting toward different ownership structures.

In a July 2025 interview with Fortune, Pennington described Edward Jones as "a health and wellbeing company," reflecting her view that financial advice is fundamentally connected to clients' overall life outcomes and not merely to portfolio performance. This framing represented an effort to position the firm's advisory services within a broader context of client welfare.

In an October 2025 appearance on Bloomberg Television, Pennington discussed market conditions and noted that while volatility was likely ahead, signs pointed to underlying client confidence. Her public commentary on market trends and economic outlook has become a regular feature of her role as the public face of the firm.

Partnership Model and Firm Structure

Edward Jones's structure as a limited partnership is central to its identity and to Pennington's leadership approach. Unlike publicly traded financial services companies, Edward Jones does not answer to outside shareholders, a distinction that Pennington has cited as enabling the firm to take a longer-term view on investments in its people and infrastructure. The firm's financial advisors number in the tens of thousands and operate out of individual branch offices across the United States and Canada, making it one of the largest branch networks in the financial services industry.

Pennington's emphasis on the partnership model has been a consistent theme in her public communications. The AdvisorHub coverage in late 2025 and early 2026 highlighted her argument that the partnership structure, combined with the firm's scale, creates a distinctive competitive position in wealth management — one that allows advisors to think and act like business owners while having access to institutional resources.

Next-Generation Advice and Technology

Part of Pennington's strategic agenda has involved preparing Edward Jones for what she and other firm leaders have described as "next-gen advice" — the integration of technology, data analytics, and evolving client expectations into the firm's advisory model. The December 2025 AdvisorHub interview specifically referenced the firm's investments in next-generation advice delivery as a pillar of its forward strategy. While specific technology initiatives and investment figures have not been widely detailed in public reporting, the strategic direction signals an effort to modernize the firm's capabilities while retaining its relationship-driven approach to financial advice.

Personal Life

Pennington is married to Mike Fidler, and the couple has two children. The family resides in the St. Louis metropolitan area, where Edward Jones is headquartered in the suburb of Des Peres, Missouri.

Pennington has been involved in civic and community activities in the St. Louis region. She has served as a co-chair of the Forest Park Forever Women's Committee and Hat Luncheon, a philanthropic event supporting Forest Park, one of St. Louis's major public parks. She has also been profiled by St. Louis Magazine as a prominent figure in the region's business community.

In July 2025, Washington University in St. Louis announced the election of new members to its Board of Trustees, in a cycle in which Pennington's involvement with the university's governance was noted.

Pennington has been identified as a speaker and participant at events focused on women in leadership and diversity in the financial services industry. The Diversity Woman organization has profiled her in connection with its conference programming.

Recognition

Pennington has received significant recognition within the financial services industry and in broader business circles.

She has appeared on Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women list, an annual ranking that identifies influential women leaders in business, government, and philanthropy. In 2020, Fortune included Pennington on the list, an inclusion that was reported by the St. Louis Business Journal.

In 2025, American Banker ranked Pennington fourth on its annual list of the Most Powerful Women in Finance, noting her leadership of Edward Jones's shift toward financial-planning advice and banking services. The ranking placed her among the most influential female executives in the American financial sector.

Wealthmanagement.com named Pennington one of its "Ten to Watch" for 2019, at the outset of her tenure as managing partner.

Pennington is a member of the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of major American companies that advocates on economic and public policy issues. She is also a member of The Business Council.

Legacy

Penny Pennington's tenure as managing partner of Edward Jones represents a period of strategic transformation for one of the largest and most recognized financial services firms in the United States. Her leadership has coincided with broader industry shifts toward comprehensive financial planning, the integration of technology into advisory services, and evolving expectations among both clients and financial advisors regarding the scope and delivery of wealth management.

As one of the few women to lead a major American financial services firm, Pennington's career and public profile have contributed to broader conversations about gender representation in the upper echelons of the finance industry. Her appearances on lists such as Fortunes Most Powerful Women and American Bankers Most Powerful Women in Finance reflect the visibility of her position and the attention it has drawn to questions of leadership diversity in financial services.

Pennington's emphasis on the partnership model, interdependence among advisors, and the holistic connection between financial advice and client wellbeing have shaped the public identity of Edward Jones during her tenure. Whether these strategic commitments produce lasting structural change at the firm, or serve primarily as a period of transition within a broader arc of industry consolidation and transformation, will be a subject of analysis in the years ahead.

Her civic engagement in the St. Louis community, including her involvement with Forest Park Forever and with Washington University in St. Louis, has also been a feature of her public profile, reflecting a pattern common among senior business leaders in the region of combining corporate leadership with philanthropic and institutional service.