My journey into private wealth management was anything but conventional, especially since I had already landed my dream job after graduating from college: Serving as an F/A-18 pilot in the United States Navy. 

As a graduate of the Navy's Fighter Weapons School— made famous by the Tom Cruise movies Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick — I was fortunate to have experienced the heights of that field of endeavor. The Navy taught me to thrive under pressure and to approach challenges with both analytical rigor and creativity. But despite having achieved that dream, after years of living it I found myself drawn to different pastures. 

Transitioning out of the Navy, I decided to pursue law and finance at Stanford. At that time, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do in the private sector. During my first year, I explored various career paths, interviewing with law firms and investment banks. While these fields seemed intellectually stimulating, they didn’t feel like they were the right fit for me. 

It was during this exploratory phase that someone introduced me to private wealth management—a serendipitous moment that would come to define my future career. From the outset, private wealth management captivated me. The field offered a unique blend of intellectual challenge and personal connection. 

Early on, I met incredible mentors who helped me understand the dynamic nature of the industry. What struck me most was how advisors played pivotal roles in their clients’ lives, advising on high-stakes decisions such as navigating IPOs or mergers and acquisitions and how to deal with the results: some truly a blessing and others a distinct challenge. 

These professionals weren’t just financial advisors, they were trusted partners navigating complex transitions alongside their clients. This sense of purpose resonated deeply with me. 

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with truly extraordinary clients—founders of great companies, GSB professors whose courses I once took (see, e.g., Sons of Stanford), executives at leading corporations, as well as foundations and endowments driving global impact. 

My time at Goldman Sachs and Jordan Park reinforced my appreciation for the importance of advisory relationships in wealth management. These experiences taught me that building trust and understanding clients’ unique goals are paramount in delivering meaningful advice. They also taught me the importance of getting the details right. 

At both Goldman and Jordan Park, ensuring that there were no mistakes in any piece of client-facing material was critical, because failing to do so causes trust to erode quickly. I recall that at one point early in my career at Goldman, we sent a client an Excel based financial analysis that incorrectly calculated the expected return on an investment because of a simple failure to sum all the rows in a column correctly. How many times has any one of us made a mistake like that or caught a similar one just in the nick of time? It got me thinking, why do so many of our processes in financial services have to be so reliant on humans doing manual tasks and therefore subject to human frailties?

Things like basic financial analysis, payment processing, and cash flow reporting all relied on outdated systems completely lacking in scalability. Recognizing these inefficiencies has inspired my next chapter—building software solutions to streamline these critical functions. 

By focusing on automating payments and simplifying cash flow reporting, my team and I aim to make running wealth management firms more efficient than ever before, enabling advisors to focus on what truly matters: serving their clients. 

Private wealth management has been more than just a career for me, it’s been a way to combine my analytical skills with my passion for helping others navigate complex financial landscapes. The relationships I’ve built along the way have been deeply rewarding, and I’m excited about contributing to the industry’s evolution through innovation. 

As we look ahead, I’ll be following up with more thoughts on the industry, its history and evolution, as well as the things that leaders at wealth management firms can do to drive long-term, sustainable growth in their businesses.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. Please get in touch here: https://www.atomicinsights.io/schedule-demo.