About Us
An Ally for Your Financial Future
Kurtis Barnett
Kurtis Barnett is a Series 65 Agent with a Life Insurance and Health Insurance licenses. He has worked in the insurance industry from a young age, although was officially licensed in 2004.
Kurtis has a natural want to help people, and enjoys the study of financial planning. He always does what’s best for clients. He’s often praised for asking important questions that, according to most clients, they’ve never been asked before. Additionally, he’s been ranked in the nation’s top 20 largest producing agents, out of a total of the 25,000 with Allianz.
Kurtis is an honest, driven, hard-working, by his own admission “workaholic.” When not working, however, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Mary, traveling, and also has martial arts as a hobby.
Kurtis is the proud son of Dean & Jean Barnett. He has two sisters, Kayla & Karen, all of whom still live in his hometown in Iowa, where he visits them several times per year.
Mary Barnett
Mary is an Event Coordinator, and is also in charge of marketing and client relations. She has a number of responsibilities: Planning out the calendar year, creating marketing for clients and prospects, planning events, booking appointments, and more. She also enjoys that the job allows her to spend more time with Kurtis, her husband.
Mary is hard-working, dependable, caring, highly organized, and an animal lover.
When not working, Mary volunteers at a no-kill animal shelter, does DIY projects, or simply spends time with her pets and Kurtis.
Chris Gelfuso
Bio coming soon!
Jessica Castle
Jessica holds the title of Supervisor of Client Relations with the Financial Alliance. Her responsibilities include overseeing new business transactions and client service requests for all lines of business, as well as supervising and training other employees on new business processing and client services.
Jessica gets a lot of enjoyment out of helping clients navigate complicated paperwork and transactions, making the process easier for them. She also enjoys helping her fellow employees succeed. She's compassionate, tenacious, funny, and smart.
When not working, she spends her time playing board games, hiking, or reading. Jessica lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband, Bryce. She has two cats named MacReady and Bullet.
Lukas
Bio coming soon!
Joanna Timmons
Joanna is a Client Services Specialist with the Financial Alliance. She makes sure the office runs smoothly, assisting with prepping for seminars and communication with clients (answering phone calls and the like.)
Joanna takes care to ensure clients are receiving the best service possible. She has had other jobs in the past related to event planning, but wanted to find a job role where her hard work would really help others.
When not working, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their two cats, at their home in Long Beach, California.
Kristina Ponomareva
Kristina's title is Transaction Coordinator with the Financial Alliance & Insurance Solutions. She is responsible for new business in fixed and fixed indexed annuities. She's responsible for submitting applications for clients, coordinating with advisors, clients, and carriers to ensure proper handling of clients’ funds, and making sure records remain accurate and the necessary paperwork is completed correctly.
Kristina enjoys helping clients get closer to achieving their financial goals by making the paperwork process as smooth and straightforward as possible. She also values the opportunity to gain exposure to different areas of the company and to learn from her coworkers’ experiences. Kristina has always been passionate about finance and truly believes that managing money properly is one of the most important aspects of people’s lives. By doing so, people can ensure they're taking proper care of their present and future, as well as their loved ones. Having the opportunity to help others achieve that goal is fulfilling for her.
Kristina was a high school valedictorian and graduated from California State University, Long Beach in May 2025 with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics and a Minor in Finance, earning Summa Cum Laude and a Departmental Honors Award. During her time in college, she worked as an Instructional Student Assistant, tutoring student-athletes in various math, statistics, and finance courses. She also published an article on Runge’s Phenomenon—polynomial interpolation and numerical instability—featuring Python-based visualizations, formulas, and examples, which received over 13,000 reads.
Kristina is very intelligent and goal-oriented. She can accomplish just about anything she sets her mind to and is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals. In her free time, she loves playing golf. She began playing as a child, went on to play for the National Team, and later competed in Division I golf in college. She won the Long Beach City Golf Championship in 2022, achieving the best result in tournament history.
Joshuah
Bio coming soon!
Karen Baardson
Karen is the Head of Accounting, and Kurtis’ sister. Karen has a hand in anything and everything that has to do with Kurtis' bank accounts. She handles all payroll and outgoing payments, oversees the bookkeepers, helps with any snags they run into, works with the CPA answering questions about the books, and helps troubleshoot glitches with our password and file sharing platform. She also typically takes care of new employee paperwork as well as termination paperwork. Her job is a little different every day: There’s always a new problem to tackle or an issue to research. Karen likes to fill in all the blanks and complete tasks.
Karen is funny, relaxed, but incredibly organized, full of energy, and isn’t above laughing at herself.
She lives with her husband of 21 years, Kyle, their 4 sons, and 1 dog, Cora. When not working, Karen enjoys a number of hobbies: She loves audiobooks and podcasts, cooking, baking, scrapbooking, board games, puzzles, exercising, doing any sort of DIY project, and giving back to the community. Karen volunteers and her local church, her childrens’ Christian school, and often at homeless shelters. And of course, she loves spending time with her family.
Jennyfer Sickler
Jennyfer handles coordinating the mailers for seminars, by running demographic counts, designing postcards and flyers, and scheduling the mailing. She also sometimes assists in the area of seminars, namely with the check-in process and helping determine seminar locations. Jennyfer landed a professional sales job at the age of 22, and it was here that she learned about helping companies target their correct audience. She has now been in sales and marketing for over 27 years.
Jennyfer has a number of sales achievement awards, but considers being the maid of honor at Mary and Kurtis’ wedding the best title she’s been given. Each year, she volunteers with the Sunshine Kids Foundation.
Jennyfer loves to make people laugh. She’s the life of the party, with a want to bring out the fun in everybody. When not working, Jennyfer loves to travel, try out new restaurants, and of course, spend time with her family. She has three children: Aliyah, Cameron, and Isaiah, and two dogs, FiFi and Dexter.
100+
Yearly Education Events
800+
Happy Clients
18+
Years Experience
Giving Back to the Community
Not everyone is as fortunate as we are. However, because of this, we believe in the importance of giving back to our community. We partner up with a number of amazing charities in the area, and work hard to keep those partnerships active and strong. Is there a charity that you feel is in need of support? Reach out to us about it. We'd be happy to look into it.
