Johni Hays is Senior Vice President with Thompson & Associates, where she helps donors to her clients figure out what they need in an estate plan to accomplish their goals. For the past two years she has also spearheaded the RIFT project, a two-pronged approach to simplifying the process by which charities can collect death benefits from IRAs. She and others are leading an effort to find legal and legislative remedies to the unnecessarily complex transfer process currently required by many IRA administrators. She also maintains a database of useful contacts at and current IRA transfer requirements of an ever-expanding list of IRA administrators.
Johni served as the president of the Charitable Estate Planning Institute and she is the author of the book, Essentials of Annuities and co-author of the book, The Tools and Techniques of Charitable Planning. She also served on the board of the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners and serves as a founding charitable planning author of Steve Leimberg’s electronic newsletter service, LISI.
Johni is in demand as a national lecturer on estate and charitable planning, probate, living wills, annuities, life insurance, retirement planning and IRAs, as well as income, estate and gift taxation. Johni has practiced law with an emphasis in charitable and estate planning since graduating cum laude with a JD from Drake Law School in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1993. She also holds a BS in Business Administration, magna cum laude, from Drake University in 1988. Johni has been a member of both the Iowa Bar and the Florida Bar since 1993.
