Rise Growth Partners, the RIA investing company launched by former United Capital CEO Joe Duran, has added Jennifer Geoghegan as its chief marketing officer and Tony Ling as managing partner, investments.
Geoghegan joins from Circle Wealth Management, a Summit, N.J. registered investment advisor, where she was chief operating officer. Prior to that, she served as the first CMO at The Colony Group, a Focus Financial Partners firm.
At Rise, she’ll oversee marketing activities for the broader organization and its partner firms, including strategy and brand development, with the goal of driving revenue growth for its RIA partners.
Ling was mostly recently a managing director at Corsair Capital, a private equity firm focused on the financial services space. Prior to that, he worked at Lightyear Capital and JPMorgan.
At Rise, he’ll use his experience managing transactions and contacts in the industry to help potential partners execute their own mergers and acquisitions. He’ll also work with partner firms to drive follow-on M&A, including building finance functions and strategy.
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.
Duran has been building out his management team over the last several months. In October, he brought on Terri Kallsen as managing partner and head of the operating partnership team. In April, the firm hired Stacy Coffey, a former senior vice president of wealth strategies at Wealth Enhancement Group, as managing director and head of advisory partnerships. He also snagged 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.
Rise Growth is one of a few new firms focused on taking minority stakes in RIAs. Karl Heckenberg, the former CEO of Emigrant Partners, launched his private equity company, Constellation Wealth Capital, at the end of 2023, taking stakes in seven firms to date.
Just this week, Jim Dickson, founder and former CEO of Sanctuary Wealth, announced the launch of Elevation Point, an investment firm he says will take minority stakes in RIAs with $200 million to $3 billion in client assets and help those firms grow. Working with Mark Penske, founder and chairman of United Atlantic Capital and son of legendary race car driver and team owner Roger Penske, Elevation Point acquired Mount Yale Capital Group, an RIA and Outsourced Chief Investment Officer with $3.4 billion in assets under management, to build the firm's infrastructure.
