Christina Lewis, founding father of Beatrice Advisors, at her home office with a portrait of her father, Reginald Lewis.
Cindy Johnson
Christina Lewis had her first asset allocation meeting together with her wealth manager when she was 13.
“I remember the meeting well,” Lewis said. “It was a turbulent time for my family. And [the advisor] was the just one who had the knowledge I needed and [knew] easy methods to discuss with me for this latest world I used to be in.”
That latest world involved a tragic loss and sudden inheritance. Her father, Reginald Lewis, the founding father of the food giant TLC Beatrice International and the primary African American to construct a business with $1 billion in revenue, died on the age of fifty from a cerebral hemorrhage. Christina was left with a big fortune and few answers.
Over the subsequent 30 years, Lewis would work with six different institutional wealth managers and 12 different relationship managers. Her experience and success in forming her family office and running two foundations has led her to her latest enterprise: a multifamily office geared toward the subsequent generation, targeting people like herself.
“That is about families and their assets and the way you consider them,” she said. “Whenever you’re inclusive, whenever you take a look at diverse perspectives, whenever you empower women, whenever you empower your kids, whenever you educate your clients, whenever you allow them authority and autonomy and independence, that’s a greater solution to live. Your loved ones can be healthier, wealthier, happier and more functional.”
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Lewis’ company, called Beatrice Advisors, goals to vary the normal business of managing the fortunes of the rich and inheritors. With greater than $84 trillion expected to be passed down from older to younger generations in the subsequent 30 years, in accordance with estimates from Cerulli Associates, a market research firm, Beatrice goals to be on the forefront of managing the wealth of inheritors.
Beatrice Advisors goals to make education and accessibility paramount since many young inheritors can be latest to managing wealth, Lewis said. It’ll welcome a more diverse group of wealth-holders by way of race, ethnicity and gender. And it’s going to take a “holistic approach” to a family’s assets, considering not only their money but additionally their values, skills and life paths, Lewis said.
Since today’s younger generations are more tech-focused, the advisory firm has spent years constructing a high-tech dashboard that provides families an up-to-the-minute, unified view of their portfolio and assets.
“We construct the dashboard and advise the clients, but they drive the automotive,” she said.
Multifamily offices like Beatrice mix the hyper-personalized and confidential approach of a single-family office — which manages the fortunes and logistics of 1 family — with the shared costs and resources of an investment firm.
Along with managing investments, multifamily offices typically handle taxes, trusts, family governance, philanthropy and legal issues. A growing variety of ultra-wealthy families are turning to multifamily offices for generational wealth transitions, given their expertise in family wealth dynamics and governance.
Lewis’ own personal investing education began when she was 7 years old, helping her father manage his stock portfolio. Along with owning his own company, Reginald Lewis had a portfolio of non-public stocks and designated Christina as his “broker.”
“I’d read the stock tables within the newspaper within the morning,” she said, “After which at the top of the day, after market close, I’d call to get the evening’s close. And I had this notebook where I tracked every little thing.”
After her father’s death, she worked together with her first wealth manager to select stocks and construct an aggressive portfolio. Amongst her stock picks: Disney and Limited “because we talked about investing in what I do know.”
Over time, her wealth advisors were continuously churning: Firms got acquired and her relationship managers modified yr by yr. It was hard, she said, to seek out an asset manager “who sees you for you, not only an appendage of one other entity.”
Eventually, she created a family office, BFO21, and hired her own team. Beatrice can be separate from BF021, but it’s going to have team members in common and can share best practices, investments and expertise.
Meredith Bowen, a former partner at Seven Bridges Advisors who’s now president and chief investment officer of Beatrice, said the advisory firm will put a high priority on tax efficiency and custom tax structures.
“We’re really attempting to create an investment infrastructure that is particular to a person taxpayer’s picture,” Bowen said.
Beatrice will goal clients with between $25 million and $300 million in net price, although Bowen said that “the biggest families will get quite a bit out of us.”
As an lively philanthropist, Lewis founded All Star Code, a nonprofit organization that gives young men of color with basic web and coding skills. She also co-founded Giving Gap, formerly Give Blck, a searchable database of vetted, Black-founded nonprofits. She can also be vice chair of the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation.
Lewis said that by making wealth advice accessible to a more diverse and young population, she hopes to assist more families like her own.
“After I was firms, I wanted that alignment with the values and type of the clients,” she said. “I feel like [Beatrice] can be diverse and inclusive from the get-go.”