My Professional Journey

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my early life was a training ground for how I work today. Working my way through high school and college and being largely financially independent from a young age did not just build grit. It rewired how I think. I learned to see second-order consequences, stay calm under pressure, and treat every decision as real because someone’s life sits on the other side of it. Those early years built a deep respect for responsibility, effort, and the weight money carries in a family’s world.

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I started in financial services while still an undergraduate as a customer service associate at Bank of America, earned my Series 7 during my senior year, and began my advisory career at an insurance-backed RIA in Connecticut. I worked with utility workers across New England, helping them manage their 401(k) and IRA assets. Many are still clients today, more than twenty years later. Early on, I experienced the moment every advisor faces. Clients were not simply investing. They were entrusting me with their life savings. That responsibility hit hard. It created a healthy fear of being wrong, and it drove me to build real depth.

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Soon after that epiphany, I immersed myself in the world of finance. I pursued an MBA at Fordham University with a concentration in portfolio management, enrolled in the CFA program, and talked my way into a role at Credit Suisse in New York City. That period combined formal education and self-study with the intensity of real markets and the expectations of sophisticated families. It forced me to organize information quickly, form independent views, pressure test assumptions, and make decisions with incomplete data. Over time, those lessons became a repeatable system that still guides my work today. Rigorous research, disciplined portfolio construction, clear risk management, and a bias toward clarity when complexity is highest.

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One of the most profound chapters of my career was running a family office that operated inside a large national organization. It put me in the middle of what actually drives outcomes for complex families. I had exposure to company financials, strategy meetings, mergers and acquisitions, business positioning, marketing decisions, and the family dynamics that shape how wealth is built, protected, and transferred. At the same time, I managed the family’s public markets portfolio, staying close to markets every day through active trading, manager due diligence, and portfolio construction across both public and private investments. That seat taught me to think like an owner and an operator, not just an advisor. It trained me to connect business reality to personal planning, stress test decisions across tax, liquidity, governance, and risk, and move capital with conviction. During that tenure, I also gained substantial real estate experience, investing tens of millions of dollars of equity across transactions and learning firsthand how structure, execution, and cycles matter as much as the asset itself.

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While I was doing that work for one family, other families began approaching me with the same question. Can you do for us what you are doing for them? That pattern confirmed a belief I still hold today. Many successful families want institutional quality advice and coordination, but the traditional wealth management industry is often not built to deliver it with the rigor, integration, and accountability required.

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That insight pushed me to build, not just advise. I partnered with my close friend Frank McKiernan, and we started our practice at Merrill Lynch, where we built a significant business over three years and earned the titles of Vice President.

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Our work caught the attention of the CEO of Baker Tilly, a top-10 CPA advisory firm, who recruited our team to establish and grow the firm’s East Coast wealth management presence. Frank and I later became Co-Practice Leaders for Baker Tilly Wealth Management, overseeing a national group of roughly a dozen advisors and helping build the platform, elevate the client experience, and bring a more institutional approach to planning and portfolio construction for complex families.

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Over my career, my role expanded far beyond investments into trust and estate coordination, tax strategy, philanthropic planning, and serving as a steady advisor during periods of complexity or uncertainty. Across these experiences, one theme became clear. The best advice is rarely one-dimensional. It requires seeing the full board and evaluating decisions from multiple angles.

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That philosophy ultimately led to the co-founding of Third View Private Wealth, where I serve as Managing Partner. I hold the CFA and CAIA designations, and I am a Registered Financial Advisor with the NFL Players Association. These credentials reflect both technical depth and a lifelong commitment to preparation, perspective, and professional excellence.