For the first ten years, I was a sole practitioner with the help of one assistant.  I gradually realized that to be really effective and serve clients well, it would take a team of dedicated and like-minded individuals.  So I gradually added teammates, starting with another assistant.  Then Ed Krall joined me as an analyst and financial planner.  Since we had no precedent to follow, it took us a year to fully define Ed’s role, and ever since he has been an essential and indispensable member of the team.  Finally we found a peer partner in Gerard Zell, a former commercial banker with extensive lending experience and an expert in hedging concentrated stock positions.  Since 2001 we have been a team of five professionals who cover the office M-F from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus “on call” by cell.  We divide the workload in such a way that clients are served in the most efficient manner possible.  In order to do that effectively, it requires consistent communication and consistent coordination among the five of us.  That’s easy enough to say; it’s harder to do.  We apply ourselves constantly to a seamless delivery system.

Gerard and I share investment responsibility, as well as team management.  Our personal goal is to always do our very best for clients, delivering superior results and unparalleled service, even when market conditions make it hard to deliver positive absolute returns.  We are proud of our results and proud of our client service.  The markets and the financial service industry are dynamic places, and our promise to clients requires that we respond and keep changing with it in ways that truly benefit them.

I grew up in a real estate family in Florida.  As a young man just out of college, I began my career as a banker, lending to small businesses, with what was to become one of the largest banks in the country.  Subsequently, I became a lender and hedging strategist to holders of concentrated stock positions during the dot.com era for a major NYSE firm.  I ran a $1.5 billion loan portfolio and had the largest book of business in the country for that firm.  It was in that capacity that I came to know Stephanie Twomey, Ed Krall, and the other members of their team, and I worked as a Specialist for them as they helped clients hedge concentrated stock positions. 

I became Stephanie’s business partner in 2001, because in true entrepreneurial spirit I wanted to be part of a successful practice and help shape its destiny.  I had great respect for the business she had created to that point, and I was thrilled to be able to draw on my real estate knowledge, my lending expertise, my risk management skills, and my concentrated stock knowledge to complement the financial planning, asset management, and wealth transfer expertise that the team already provided. 

The five of us make a great team.  Each one of us has a unique set of complementary skills, but all of us come with the same dedication to results and client service and a determination to maintain that edge.  The other side of the business equation would be our clients, who are to a person accomplished, intelligent and successful people who appreciate what we do for them, are realistic in their expectations, and are a pleasure to work with.  We have a service understanding with our clients to provide regular communications and quarterly performance updates.  Along with those rules of engagement we add relevant client events so that clients can interact with one another if they choose and also gather cutting edge information on topics of interest.  I take great satisfaction in what we are able to do for clients, and for all these many reasons, I look forward to a long and satisfying career in their service.