By: Mark Weiskind

Clients and Friends,

It has been quite a last year or so in all our lives and that has certainly been the case here at Fairway.  Three major events marked our past year.

  1. The loss of Terry Waye. Our friend, colleague, advisor and generally wonderful human being Terry Waye passed away unexpectedly last November 1. We are still dealing with Terry’s loss both personally and professionally. We thank all our clients for their understanding as we worked through the client service issues and for all the support they’ve provided to us and to Terry’s family these past several months.
  2. Covid. Like most businesses, Fairway’s office closed in mid-March 2020 and little did we know it would be more than a year later before we finally feel close to being able to reopen again.  It was a good test of all our business continuity plans and I’m pleased to say we feel like we were able to continue to provide the same level of high touch, high value service to our clients as we always have. That being said, we can’t wait to see many of you face-to-face, and not on our Zoom screens!
  3. Focus Partnership – Fairway partnered with Focus Financial Partners in December, becoming one of about 70 firms across that country that are part of the Focus partnership. While maintaining our independence, we are excited about the opportunities this partnership will provide, both internally and for our clients.

Through it all, we managed to hire three new employees, with plans to likely hire several more during the remainder of 202l, as well as welcome our first summer intern.

  • Brian Tullio joined us in March 2020 as an Associate Wealth Manager.  Brian graduated from John Carroll University with a degree in Finance, then received his JD and LL.M in Taxation from Capital University Law School. Brian joins Fairway after practicing law in the estate and tax arena and then serving as legal counsel in the planned giving department of the Cleveland Clinic.  He also managed to obtain his CFP and has started his career with Fairway helping support a number of client relationships, with the goal of being in a lead advisory capacity in the next few years.
  • Vince DiGiacomo joined us in January 2021, also as an Associate Wealth Manager. Vince graduated from The University of Akron in December 2020, getting his BS in Financial Planning.  Akron is one of the few programs nationally that has a designated program in financial planning and Vince will be able to sit for the CFP exam later this year.
  • Jake Yeager also jointed us in January 2021. Jake graduated from Miami University, majoring in Finance with a minor in Data Analytics.  Jake will help support our family office services practice on the client service side, as well as provide back office and operational assistance in helping the firm maintain data integrity and support for our various operating systems.

In other employee news over the past year:

  • Laura Reifschneider was promoted to manager in our Family Office Services practice.
  • Franco DiLiberto and Dina Leader both passed the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) exam and are now officially a CFP.  Congratulations to them both!

Firm Updates:

  • Fairway now serves approximately 250 clients, residing in 27 different states, with over $1.8B of regulatory assets under management.
  • After over a year where most of our staff has primarily been working from home, we are scheduled to officially re-open the office effective June 1.  While we’ll continue to offer some work from home opportunities, it will be nice to get everyone back together, as well as to start to meet with our clients face-to-face again.
  • Approximately 50 people joined us for our first “Fairway Wealth Presents” virtual event, featuring Liz Ann Sonders, the Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab and moderated by Matt Garrott, our very own Director of Investment Research.  Feedback was excellent and we plan to continue to host these events on a regular basis moving forward.  A replay of the event is here.
  • We recently updated our website at www.fairwaywealth.com.  Our website also has links to our technology partners, including Black Diamond, Charles Schwab, and Citrix file sharing.  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 Laura Reifschneider, who heads out our client facing technology services.
  • We have recently posted openings for two separate job opportunities…an Associate Wealth Manager to help support the wealth management teams, and a Senior Client Service Associate, to help support Maria Hinton and her operations and client service team.  If you know of anyone that might be a candidate and would like us to forward the formal job descriptions, please let us know.

It’s always an honor and privilege for all of us at Fairway to work with so many kind and appreciative people. We want to thank you for your continued trust and support and look forward to a return to a more normal remainder of 2021 and beyond.