What a year it’s been at Zenith! Since my last update twelve months ago, we have made significant strides in delivering best-in-class client service, growing our team to deliver that service, and building our client pipeline, which has put us closer to reaching our mission. Our work to develop client success and the more equitable future that we envision has never felt more important. We are building the premier wealth management firm for intentional, diverse, and ambitious clients.

Over the past year, we have had many successes to celebrate. Here are a few of our most notable accomplishments:

• By adding early-stage founders and institutions to our existing growing base of individuals, families, and businesses, we have significantly expanded our client base.
• The firm’s financial position is strengthening due to more financial planning engagements, new investment accounts opened, and the management of private investment vehicles. 
• Recent enhancements to our investment thesis and PEAK evaluation process have driven strong investment performance. These changes stemmed from client feedback that signaled a desire for greater transparency in our investment and security selection process. In consultation with key internal and external stakeholders, we’ve sharpened our investment thesis to be the following: diverse teams focused on growing a business or project to create a more equitable society will ultimately outperform. This bias helps us create an intentional investment opportunity set upon which we can apply our PEAK framework, which we discuss in more detail on our website.

In addition to innovating on our service model and investment process, our team has grown by 4 full-time teammates and 4 seasonally rotating part-time college interns. Partheev, Allison, Lucas, and Raeonna have been great additions to our team by improving process, asking questions, and doing their best to effectively serve our clients. I believe that our team’s diversity is directly contributing to high performance and client success. 

Looking ahead, I couldn’t be more excited about our evolving pipeline. We are experiencing growing demand across all of our service lines. I’m excited about the following opportunities:

• Creating a fund of funds to allocate foundation and endowment capital to local impact deals and emerging, diverse money managers. We are increasingly involved in the local impact investment community – both on the funder and entrepreneur level. 
• Raising and managing a venture fund to invest in black and brown female founders. 
• Working with organizations and programs to provide financial modeling services for minority owned businesses. 

To take on these new endeavors and continue to spread our impact, we expect to hire 4 to 8 more teammates over the next 12 months.  We also have begun building an acquisition pipeline to accelerate our growth with mission-aligned partners. 

In closing, thank you to all of our clients, teammates, mentors, partners, and stakeholders for an outstanding year. I’m excited for the year ahead and the long-term journey to eliminate wealth inequality by delivering high quality investments and advice.

– Jason