Brookwood hires four partners rather than a buyer

Brookwood Investment Group has tripled in size in under two years. The Phoenix-based RIA platform managed $515 million at the start of 2024. It now holds more than $1.5 billion. The firm has over 75 advisors. That growth is getting an answer in the form of four new partners, not a sale or outside capital.

WealthManagement.com reports that CEO and co-founder Kimberly Raimondo has brought on President Claire Alexander, Chief Growth Officer Michael Jones, Chief Operating Officer Jasmine Yu, and Chief Financial Officer and Head of Institutional Operations Jeffrey Williams as partners. Raimondo, who worked in law firms before moving into wealth management, said she wanted people who could own something and eventually take over from her as part of a succession plan. The four executives agreed to wait until all could join at once.

The group spans institutional and RIA backgrounds. Jones held roles at BlackRock, TD Ameritrade Institutional and AssetMark. Yu was COO at e3 Wealth. Williams worked at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, then as a hedge fund controller. Alexander founded Arch's Anvil.

Brookwood is going against the common path for mid-sized RIAs, many of which are finding that managing producing advisors stops working well at a certain size. The usual next step is outside capital or a sale to a larger aggregator. Partnership structures exist — Corient, one of the country's largest RIAs, works that way — but Brookwood is trying to build one at $1.5 billion while still growing fast.

Whether four new partners with strong resumes can integrate at once without flattening the culture that produced the growth remains the open question. If integration goes well, Brookwood becomes a reference point for principals who want scale and succession without selling. If integration goes badly, the cost is a year of internal friction at the exact moment the platform needs operational discipline.