Carina Diamond, who left Dakota Wealth Management last year to launch her own consulting business, has joined Gries Financial Partners, a Cleveland-based registered investment advisor, as chief growth officer in a newly created role. Diamond will also serve in the same role for Gries’ parent company, the 4100 Group Financial Services, the financial services vertical of The 4100 Group, which is backed by Delta Dental of Michigan, an insurance provider.
Gries has about $1.7 billion in assets under management and advisement.
4100FS owns several wealth and asset management firms, including Bull Harbor Capital, a Bethesda, Md.-based RIA; the Family Office Resource Group, a multi-family office advisory firm; and Red Cedar Investment Management, an institutional asset manager.
In her role within 4100FS, she’ll work with these other portfolio companies to strategize how they can grow together. For example, other RIAs may have clients who would benefit from FORG's family office services.
"All of those are together in this mix of services that we’re going to be able to offer clients,” Diamond said.
Gries decided to create the chief growth officer role to have someone dedicated to organic growth, succession planning and talent development, all of which Diamond said aligns with her skillsets.
“They were at an inflection point where some good things had been happening. There was some momentum behind it,” she said. “And I think they realized, ‘Even though we have maybe a handful of people that are really focusing on the growth side, we really need to concentrate that in someone who’s going to lead that effort and bring everyone else along.’”
“It was all those things that maybe disparate people were doing, but they wanted to really invest in that more as part of the growth strategy itself,” she added.
Gries has already added some younger advisors to other Midwest markets, such as Kansas City and Nashville, Tenn. However, the firm is looking to add more in Northeastern Ohio. The firm also wants to implement a formal internship program to develop younger talent, an area of focus for Diamond.
“I’ve built and sold three firms, and I did it using a lot of great interns over the years—developing them,” she said. “But I’ve learned a lot of firms are not great at it.”
Diamond has also been tasked with developing Gries’ existing advisor talent; she’ll come up with individual talent development plans for each client advisor.
“What I’m going to be working on is firming up and really working on the umbrella marketing strategy: Who is Gries Financial Partners?” she said. “And then really working with each advisor, ‘OK, you’re a sub-brand. People are coming to you because it’s you and what you offer. And how do we make sure we’re capturing your special essence, the special thing you can do for clients?’”
Diamond previously ran Springside Partners, a female-founded and operated wealth management firm that she sold to Dakota Wealth Management, Peter Raimondi’s RIA, in 2019. She was serving as Dakota’s chief growth officer when she left a little more than a year ago to start her own consulting firm, Stella Secunda. She says she’ll wind down her remaining engagements with the consulting firm by the end of the year.
Gries was founded in 1978 by Sally Gries, becoming Ohio’s first wholly woman-owned RIA. The firm started as a single-family office, and has since grown to serve high-net-worth families and institutional investors.
