Our Team
Learn a little more about the people behind the process of preparing your family’s legacy and story:
Andrew Sherman
Jennifer Curtis
Denise Seegmiller
A Bit of Our Story and How it Brought Us Here
Andrew Sherman
Andrew has worked with select families across the United States for well over 20 years. As an investment consultant and branch manager with Raymond James, he splits his time between managing investment portfolios, providing purposeful planning, as well as doing research and writing about how families prepare the next generation to be good stewards of their wealth.
Over his 20 years of working with families, Andrew has developed an expertise in using family wealth to build unity across the generations.
Having been coached and mentored by some of the pioneers in this field, it has given him a deep passion and purpose in his work. Being tutored by Richard Orlando of Legacy Capitals, receiving dual certificates in Family Business and Family Wealth Advising from the Family Firm Institute, being trained as a 21/64 certified advisor, becoming a Certified Private Wealth Advisor® professional through the Investments & Wealth Institute®, and receiving training from the Institute for Preparing Heirs, Andrew has gathered some of the best tools in the industry along with his own with his own proprietary family wealth strategies.
Andrew grew up as an Air Force brat having lived across the United States and in Spain. But even as his father’s career took him many different places, home was always in Michigan and the house his family has lived in for six generations. Growing up around the heirlooms and treasures from a century ago has inspired his devotion to working with generational wealth. Andrew and his wife, Kristy, have four children—three boys and a princess. He has a great love for Brazil and Guatemala. He is fluent in Portuguese and is learning Q’eqchi’, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala and Belize.
Family Legacy Story
Legacy always, always begins with story. Knowing my heritage and the trials and triumphs of the previous generation, provides me with crucial insights, lessons and even warnings about how to write my own story and the legacy I want to live and leave. While I am the one who ultimately writes my story moving forward, I can draw on the lessons from the past to be more confident about the future. Learning and sharing my Family Legacy Story is a tool I can use with my own family to foster stewardship and multigenerational unity. I invite you to hear my own story.
Family Heirloom Story
Heirlooms can literally be passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Whenever we connect story with objects, places, and principles, meaning is attached and stewardship is fostered. Once the heirloom loses its story, its meaning and value diminishes in the eye of the beholder and is eventually discarded. The principle also applies to family wealth. As we connect story to the wealth, it has greater chance to be stewarded for many generations. Here is my heirloom story.
Family Wealth Story
We generally do a good job with distributing cash to the next generations, but we typically fail at transferring stewardship of wealth beyond a generation or two. There are many reasons for this failure, but a lot has to do with a lack of family communication, lack of shared purpose, and general lack of preparedness of the heirs. A key to solving this problem is developing a Family Wealth Story. Some wealth stories tell a tale of financial success, while others may detail the struggles of poverty. Either way, understanding the story, applying the lessons, and moving forward as a united family is the ultimate objective of developing and sharing a Family Wealth Story. Here is my family story.
Jennifer Curtis
Supporting her team and working collaboratively to connect wealth management to family story is what gives her gratification. Continual education and learning are her internal motivations. She values information and loves to share what she’s learned. Over the years Jenn has collected certifications and degrees including a BA in History Education, a teaching license, a coaching certification, a Real Estate license, and an MBA.
Being quick, resourceful, and enthusiastic are a few of Jenn’s favorite things. Her superpowers are learning new tech, being efficient, and working behind the scenes. She loves working with clients by assisting with paperwork, money movement transactions, and appointment follow-up items. She manages the affairs of the office and keeps things moving.
Her husband, Kenyon (and their families) is her whole world. If you’re looking for Jenn outside of work just follow the laughter: she is quick-witted and a bit sarcastic. You will find her and her husband cooking in the kitchen, planning events/parties for friends and families, or playing video games, softball, and soccer.
Denise Seegmiller
Denise has a supporting role in the office, doing whatever needs to be done along the line of scheduling, coordinating and planning. This includes appointments and client events as well as community events that keep our office and branch manager involved in the community. Our branch is actively involved with fundraising activities and an integral part of Communities that Care. Denise can often be found helping to do the groundwork for those efforts. In her previous life, Denise earned degrees in Early Childhood and Elementary Education and now, currently, has added the designation of a Financial Paraplanner Qualified Professional. (FPQP).
When Denise contacts clients to set up appointments to discuss their concerns, she enjoys talking with them and it makes her day to have them happy to hear her on the other side of the line. Making people feel comfortable and forming friendships and positive relationships is important to her. She is also organized and likes to effectively check off her to do list on a daily basis. Staying focused and productive is important to her and she likes to help others be able to do the same.
When she’s not coordinating something here at work, she can be found organizing family events with her husband, 6 children and their spouses, and their growing number of grandchildren. They enjoy celebrating almost everything together. Future goals include more travel and finding free time to explore her personal interests that include cooking, playing the piano, reading, attending cultural events, skydiving and finding new and exciting places to play with her family.