Morningstar Advisor - Summer 2008 - 8

Contributors Susan T. Bart Education plays a particularly important role in Susan Bart’s life. Her great-grandparents immigrated to the United States, and each subsequent generation improved their lot by completing a more advanced level of education. “My parents completed college, in my mother’s case by returning at night while working,” says Bart, who writes “10 Tax-Smart Tips for College-Savings Planning” on page 45. “Their education and hard work afforded them a comfortable life and the ability to send my brother and me to graduate school.” She’s now a trustee at her mother’s alma mater in Chicago, Roosevelt University, which is dedicated to providing a higher education to lower-income students. As an estate attorney, she helps clients fund the educations of their grandchildren. She also writes a monthly college-planning column for MorningstarAdvisor.com. “Education permits self-determination,” she says. “It provides the opportunity to overcome limitations that might otherwise be imposed by social class, gender, or race.” Bridget B. Hughes To Bridget Hughes, about the only time it’s good to be a sheep is when her daughter, pictured above, plays one in the Christmas play. “She was cute and quiet, but hardly the star of the show,” Hughes says of last season’s performance. As a senior mutual fund analyst for Morningstar, however, Hughes definitely isn’t sheepish when it comes to investing. She’s covered her share of conventional managers who quietly go about their business trying to keep pace with their peers and benchmarks. David Winters, the subject of her Undiscovered Manager profile (page 61), doesn’t fit that mold. “To truly stand out, you have to be different,” Hughes says. “Winters is different. His fund requires trust on investors’ parts, but they’ll be glad they took that leap of faith.” Marta Norton Determining the year’s best and worst 529 plans (page 38) is a yearly challenge, Morningstar analyst Marta Norton says. Analysts weigh the value of low fees, quality of underlying funds, and diversification, among other things. A plan that excels in one area often lags in another. And plans are changing quickly. “There’s no required regulatory filing when a plan makes a change,” Norton says, “so we’d check Web sites repeatedly to make sure nothing had changed that would affect our opinion.” Not to mention that plan disclosure documents are poorly written and not standardized. Given how difficult it is to assess 529 plans, Norton believes her analysis is critically important for the industry. “Our work brings clarity to a complex industry,” she says, “and gives college savers and their advisors a starting point when doing their own analysis.” Christian Montenegro In creating this issue’s illustrations, Argentine Christian Montenegro wanted to depict a college-savings landscape of choices. “All the ‘characters’ and objects that you see in the view are money boxes,” says the native of Buenos Aires. “The parents are saving for the future of their children and must choose an option.” Montenegro studied graphic design at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. His work has been published in Argentina, Europe, the United States, and China. 8 Morningstar Advisor Summer 2008

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Morningstar Advisor - Summer 2008

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