Paul Jacobs
Paul Jacobs is Palisades Hudson’s new chief investment officer, topping a list of personnel additions and promotions this fall as the firm established a West Coast presence in metropolitan Portland, Ore.
Jacobs, 32, has spent a decade with Palisades Hudson. In addition to his CIO role, he continues in his current post as manager in charge of the Atlanta office. A native of Queens, N.Y., Jacobs started with Palisades Hudson in Scarsdale in 2002, and later was a manager in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., office before opening our Atlanta office in 2008.
Jacobs has been a member of Palisades Hudson’s Investment Committee since 2005 and our chief compliance officer since 2009. He succeeds Jonathan Bergman, who departed in August, as CIO.
David Walters
Another 10-year Palisades Hudson veteran, David Walters, relocated to the Portland area in August. Walters, also 32, began his career in Scarsdale and has been a client service manager in Fort Lauderdale since 2007.
Anna Pfaehler, 26, succeeds Jacobs as the firm’s chief compliance officer. She is a client service manager in the Scarsdale office, where she joined Palisades Hudson in 2006. Ben Sullivan, 28, also a client service manager based in Scarsdale, has joined the firm’s five-member Investment Committee. Besides Jacobs, Walters and Sullivan, the Investment Committee includes Shomari Hearn, 37, who is Palisades Hudson’s vice president in charge of technical excellence and staff development, and who also runs the Fort Lauderdale office. Eric Meermann, 34, the manager in charge of the Scarsdale office, is the fifth committee member.
Anna Pfaehler
“Our approach to managing investments is not going to change,” Jacobs said. “We are still going to counsel clients to be clear about their long-term goals and about the amount of short-term volatility they are willing to accept in pursuit of those goals. We will continue to be compensated only by our clients, who have our undivided loyalty, and we will continue to look for the most efficient and effective ways to implement our clients’ investment strategies.”
Jacobs noted that he and other senior managers at Palisades Hudson have gathered a wealth of experience as this part of the firm’s business grew from around $30 million under management when it began in 1997 to more than $1.1 billion today.
Ben Sullivan
The firm’s recent new hires include Laurie Samay, a client service associate in the Scarsdale office who worked at Palisades Hudson for three summers while attending Washington University in St. Louis, from which she recently graduated with honors; Anna Hilbert, a financial planning assistant in Fort Lauderdale, who is a member of the Florida bar and holds an LL.M. degree in taxation from the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law; and Ashley Dandridge, a financial planning assistant in Scarsdale, who is currently completing her masters’ degree in media and communications at Pace University.
Our two newest team members are Stephen Grady III, a financial planning assistant in the Atlanta office who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration management from Mercy College, and Graig Alpert, a client service associate in the Fort Lauderdale office who graduated from the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business with a bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting.
