Visibili-T is dedicated to transgender members of our community in Central Florida and Tampa Bay, some you know and many you don’t. It is designed to amplify their voices and detail their experiences in life.
This issue, we check in with Noelle Soncrant, a proud parent who relocated from Michigan to Tampa in 2002. That’s where she spends her time working to help others.
Professionally, Soncrant is a licensed financial advisor for Northwestern Mutual. The organization provides a wide range of financial services to more than 4.9 million Americans with a longtime commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Soncrant has been a Retirement Income Certified Professional for three years, she explains. “I work with individuals, families and business owners on creating a holistic financial plan that takes into account short- and long-term financial goals and risk management.”
She joined the organization after more than 25 years of fundraising for higher education.
“I was very used to having discussions about money with people,” Soncrant says. “But as my career furthered, and we started hearing more and more about the student debt crisis, I really questioned if I was serving the people that I thought I was serving. When I was raising millions of dollars, was I benefiting the students? I started to question if it was what I wanted to do.”
It wasn’t. Soncrant says that after about a decade of deliberation, she decided to make a professional change.
“What I love about it is that my whole goal is to help relieve some stress and anxiety for clients,” she says. “To show them that they have a clear path to achieving at least some of their financial goals if they do certain things. That they’re going to be okay.”
Many of those clients have become a part of her own support network, relationships that were strengthened after Soncrant began living authentically last May.
“I’m a financial planner, so I needed to have kind of a plan,” she notes. “I started working on coming out about a year before I actually did, because I needed to know what the progression was going to be for me.
“I worked really closely with Northwestern about how to communicate this to my clients, how to communicate this to our firm — and I’m ecstatic to say that when I did communicate this to my clients, I didn’t lose a single one,” she continues. “It was absolutely one of the best feelings in the world that my clients stuck with me through that. Some have become great friends and supporters.”
Soncrant also loves helping others outside of work. She regularly volunteers with organizations like Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer, Northwestern Mutual’s national philanthropy, and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.
“I got involved with them because someone who has been instrumental in my transition — honestly, my rock — she and her oldest daughter suffer from Crohn’s,” Soncrant says. “It was just a way to show her my gratitude for everything she’s done to be there for me during, without a doubt, the most challenging time of my life. I wouldn’t be here without her support.”
Soncrant is also involved with PFLAG Riverview, where she’s been helping plan their next inclusive prom, as well as Ronald McDonald House Tampa Bay. The organization works to provide “a home away from home that provides comfort, support and resources to families who travel far from home for the medical care their child needs.”
As someone who loves to cook, Soncrant regularly prepares meals for its beneficiaries.
“I just fell in love with it,” she says. “I think cooking food for people is just a great way to make them happy and I love doing that. I just decided I was going to do that on a monthly basis.
“I think it has a lot to do with my background of fundraising for so many years,” she continues. “The difference is that now I get to fundraise for the things that I care about and want to support.”
As someone who is newly out, Soncrant says she’s received a warm welcome from the community. It’s one she wouldn’t have minded joining sooner.
“Learn to love yourself earlier,” she’d tell her younger self. “My favorite book is ‘Untamed’ by Glennon Doyle and it references that at age 10, we start to give up on what our imagination tells us we can be to conform to what society tell us we should be. I completely did that for 50 years of my life.
“Learn to accept yourself and love yourself early,” she adds. “You’re enough. You don’t need acceptance from other people. You are enough as you are and others will love you for that.”
Interested in being featured in Visibili-T? Email Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Williams in Central Florida or Managing Editor Ryan Williams-Jent in Tampa Bay.
