mweiskinds

By: Mark Weiskind

Clients and Friends,

It has been nearly 18 months since we recapitalized Fairway Wealth Management, buying out our outside shareholder and making the firm 100% employee-owned.  It’s been a positive stretch for our clients, with investment portfolios generally up nicely.  And it’s been a positive stretch here, as we’ve continued to grow and expand our team and services.  As such, I wanted to send you a brief update on some recent activity here at Fairway:

We’ve recently hired two new employees:

  • Franco DiLiberto joined us in August as an Associate Wealth Manager.  Franco, a Baldwin Wallace University graduate and CPA, spent the first three years of his career as a tax advisor with a regional public accounting firm. He will be helping support a number of client relationships while starting to work on his CFP designation.
  • Sarah Romanini joined us in June as our receptionist, office manager, and client service associate, replacing Erica Robinson who moved to Texas with her family.  While we will all miss Erica, we are excited to have Sarah aboard.  A graduate of John Carroll University, Sarah spent the first 6 years of her career in social work, then spent the previous 5+ years with a private equity firm, serving as an executive assistant and office manager.

In other employees news:

  • Chris Martin passed the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) exam and is now officially a CFP.  Congratulations Chris!
  • Laura Reifschneider has been accepted into the executive MBA program at Baldwin Wallace University.
  • Dina Leader has completed the education and certification requirements to reinstitute her CPA license.

In the community:

  • Kristen Kuzma recently served as the Pro-Bono Director of the Cleveland chapter of the Financial Planning Association (FPA).
  • Korby Collins is in her fourth year on the board and finance committee of the West Side Catholic Center, an organization that assists those in need with food, clothing, shelter, and advocacy.
  • Fairway will be an upcoming sponsor of the Northeast Ohio Polycystic Kidney Walk, an organization that supports Polycystic Kidney Disease, and RhizoKids Night at the Races, an organization that supports Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata (RCDP).  These are two organizations that are near and dear to Fairway employees Matt Garrott and Chris Martin and their respective families.
  • Fairway also sponsored two events over the past summer, Moving Day Cleveland for the Parkinson’s Foundation and the West Side Catholic Center’s Pancake Run.

Firm Updates:

  • Fairway now serves nearly 200 clients, residing in 22 different states, with approximately $1.3B of regulatory assets under management.
  • We have recently rolled out a “Next-Gen” investment advisory service, targeted at the children/grandchildren of our clients that may not meet our normal account minimums yet, but that have started to accumulate some wealth and would benefit for our independent and planning-focused approach.  Please let us know if this service is something you’d like to know more about.
  • Fairway, along with our partners Charles Schwab and Black Diamond, continue to introduce new technology tools. Tools are there for electronic check deposits, online account openings and wire transfers, consolidated portfolio access and performance monitoring, an electronic document storage portal, and more.  If you are interested in learning more, contact your advisor or reach out to Maria Hinton and her operations team.

As we continue to expand our team and as our employees get more and more experience with us, we further increase our capacity to serve additional like-minded clients.  We remain open to accepting new client opportunities and most of our new client growth comes directly from introductions from our existing clients and our close advisory relationships.  So we want to thank you for your continued trust and support and we wish all of you a prosperous and healthy conclusion to 2017 and beyond.

Mark S. Weiskind, CPA/PFS, CFP