About The RBI Group
The RBI Group brings experience inside financial services and an independent perspective to the decisions shaping your firm’s next chapter.
Our founder’s story
Dr. Renée Baker has been on both sides of the conversation: leading the work inside financial-services firms and helping those firms move forward through brand, marketing and growth strategy at The RBI Group.
She brings decades of experience working at leading financial-services organizations, including Raymond James, Aberdeen Asset Management, OppenheimerFunds (now Invesco), J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Bank of New York. A former chief marketing officer, her experience spans asset management, wealth management, marketing and advisor development.
Working inside those businesses means understanding more than the strategy. It means understanding compliance requirements, competing priorities, internal approvals, the demands on a team and the responsibility to turn a decision into action.
In 2023, she founded The RBI Group, bringing that experience into a firm focused on research, brand and growth strategy. She also serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of South Florida’s Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications, connecting industry practice with teaching in advertising strategy and media planning. Her academic work examines how AI and emerging technologies influence persuasion, consumer decisions and trust.
Her doctoral training, executive education and professional credentials bring academic inquiry, leadership development and a commitment to financial understanding to her work with firms and communities.
That is the foundation of The RBI Group: familiarity with the business, paired with the perspective to challenge how it has always been done.
Education, credentials & recognition
Visiting Assistant Professor of Instruction
University of South Florida
Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications
Honors spanning financial services, marketing leadership, inclusion and community impact.
TEDxEustis · 2022
Watch “What We Get Wrong About the Racial Wealth Gap” on TED
Girls Inc. of Pinellas
ThinkAdvisor
Florida Financial Educators Council
Association of African American Financial Advisors
Tampa Bay Business Journal
LGBT Great
ThinkAdvisor
Penn State Smeal College of Business
Financial Communications Society
Financial Planning
The CMO Club
Gramercy Institute
Fund Action / Fund Direction
What both sides make possible
Insider intelligence
The pressures behind a brief. The stakeholders behind a decision. The work required to move an idea through a complex organization. That context shapes recommendations your firm can put into practice.
Independent thinking
Distance creates room to question familiar assumptions, examine the evidence and connect ideas across the business. That perspective helps your firm consider possibilities it may be too close to see.
What that means for your firm
Growth challenges rarely stay inside one department. Neither should the thinking that addresses them.
The RBI Group connects Research, Brand and Intelligence so that market understanding informs your position, your position guides the work, and your team has the capability to act.
The RBI Group works with experienced specialists across research, strategy, creative work and technology. We bring the right expertise to the question, with people who understand the business and take responsibility for the work.
Industry experience gives us context. Independent thinking keeps the questions open. Your firm’s needs give the work its direction.
Explore How The RBI Group WorksBeyond the brief
Research, Brand and Intelligence define our work with firms. Financial education is one of the commitments that connects that work to the wider community.
Through nonprofit partnerships and community involvement, The RBI Group gives back in support of greater financial understanding. We care about helping people prepare for the choices that come with building, managing and passing on wealth.
For Dr. Baker, that commitment is personal. Growing up, money was rarely discussed at home. Studying finance in college helped her understand her own financial choices and share that knowledge with her family and community. That experience continues to shape her belief that financial knowledge can expand what people see as possible.
As a Certified Financial Education Instructor through the National Financial Educators Council (NFEC) and an advisory board member of the Florida Financial Educators Council, she puts that belief into practice. It is one way The RBI Group’s commitment to community extends beyond client engagements.
Your next move
Tell us what your firm needs to solve, what success looks like and when you want to begin. We’ll discuss the right scope and next steps.