Rise Growth Partners, the RIA investing company launched by former United Capital CEO Joe Duran, has hired Stacy Coffey, a former senior vice president of wealth strategies at Wealth Enhancement Group, as managing director and head of advisory partnerships, the firm confirmed.
Coffey started her career at Schwab and was senior managing director of strategy and financial planning when she left the firm in 2019. Most recently, she was at the RIA platform Wealth Enhancement Group, where she helped advisor teams bring financial planning, tax, estate planning, 401(k) and insurance offerings to their clients.
At both firms, she worked with Terri Kallsen, who was brought on at Rise Growth in October as managing partner and head of the operating partnership team. Coffey will report to Kallsen, and help her work with the partner firms that Rise Growth invests in.
The team will provide each RIA with an “enterprise readiness assessment,” a report identifying gaps in their business and measure them across three key areas: business management, which encompasses the service model, leadership and how the RIA tracks and measures results; the enterprise platform, which means the technology used for clients and advisors and the back-office; and the growth strategy—both organic and inorganic.
“The operating partnership team is really an expert guide that helps the firms that we make investments in do that,” said Darius Mirshahzadeh, executive managing partner at Rise Growth. “[Stacy] has a track record of really helping advisors create great businesses and great customer experiences.”
Duran has been building out his management team over the last several months. In addition to Kallsen and Coffey, he also hired Will Armenta, a co-founder of Opto Investments, earlier this year, as managing director, who’s working alongside Brian Shenson, managing partner and COO, to help firms fill gaps in their existing technology and operating platforms.
Last September, Duran, who sold his company, United Capital, to Goldman Sachs in 2019, revealed details about his new venture. Rise Growth will acquire a roughly 30% stake in next-generation RIAs with between $1 billion and $7 billion in AUM. In exchange, it will provide growth capital and resources to help them become national RIA platforms with $10 billion or more in assets.
In February, the firm said it raised $250 million in funding from its management team and Charlesbank Capital Partners, the middle-market private equity firm that also backs Lido Advisors. Charlesbank will take a majority stake in the new company.
