Chicago RIA Aaron Wealth Advisors has hired former Citigroup Managing Director Jennifer Barry as an investment advisor and managing director. Barry will focus on developing business with fund and private equity managers.
Barry, 48, spent 26 years at Citigroup, according to a company announcement. She started as a financial analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, which was absorbed by Citi in 2003, right out of college and was most recently managing director of institutional equity sales and the equity sales franchise for the Midwest region.
“Across my 12 years in Boston, as well as my 11 years in Chicago, my mandate was essentially to build relationships with these professional investors to understand their investment styles, their strategy and then figure out what products and services Citi has so they can do their job better,” she said.
After nearly three decades at Citi, Barry said she was ready for something new.
Aaron Wealth Advisors CEO Gary Hirschberg said that though Barry is a "bookless advisor," she has years of experience with institutions and “deep roots” in Chicago, Detroit and other Midwest metro areas that will aid in business development, and her skills are translatable to ultra-high-net-worth clients.
“I’m not just trying to find advisors that have books of business; I’m trying to find very talented people that are successful in the financial world. Jenn fits that perfectly,” he said.
Aaron Wealth Advisors was founded in 2018 by Hirschberg, a former Goldman Sachs vice president and a top-producing private wealth management advisor, managing more than $1.4 billion in client assets for a select group of entrepreneurs, private investors, families and institutions. After 12 years at the wirehouse, Hirschberg left Goldman to launch his own registered investment advisor at Dynasty Financial Partners.
Prior to Barry, Aaron Wealth hired Adrianna Stasiuk, a former J.P. Morgan client advisor. She managed $500 million in assets by the end of her eight-year tenure with JPM. Other hires have come from Morgan Stanley and other financial services firms such as BMO Harris and asset and wealth management firm Northern Trust.
“I always believed that there are very talented people across prestigious firms,” Hirschberg said. “If we can get folks that have experiences like our CIO at Deutsche Bank and [other hires] at Northern Trust, Morgan Stanley, and now Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Private Bank—they bring thought processes that come from those institutions to us and through that we learn to better serve our clients. It’s part of our mission of diversity but from a different angle.”
Hirschberg is steadily closing in on his previous billion-dollar benchmark with $840 million in individual and institutional assets; $574.8 million of that are assets under management.