Two decades of disciplined, fee-only fiduciary work for Bay Area households.

I found my passion early.

In middle school, my dad sat me down with the financial pages of the newspaper and taught me how to analyze a company. He entered me in a stock trading competition. I was almost certainly the youngest participant. I learned what it felt like to study a business carefully, take a position, and watch the market deliver its verdict — sometimes humbling, sometimes affirming, always instructive. I was hooked.

By high school, I had pursued and won an internship at Merrill Lynch. Through college I worked at mutual fund and investment companies, learning the business from the inside before most of my peers had decided what they wanted to do. After graduation, my investment work led me to Edward Jones Investments — one of the country's most established investment firms — helping individuals and businesses invest their capital.

The work was a privilege. But over time, something didn't feel right about the structure. The incentives at large institutions don't always point toward what serves the client best. I stepped into a business-side role, supporting advisors and money managers on asset allocation, while I worked through what kind of practice I actually wanted to build.

During those years, something quietly important happened. Many of the clients I had served earlier in my career began finding their way back to me — calling for second opinions, for help with decisions their current advisors hadn't surfaced, for someone who would think through the whole picture. They weren't looking for products. They were looking for clarity.

When I learned about the fee-only fiduciary model — a structure where the advisor's only revenue is the client's fee, with no commissions, no product placements, no third-party compensation — it resonated immediately. The incentives finally pointed in one direction. In 2004, I founded Index Gurus, Inc. to do the work that way.

Twenty-plus years later, what I love most about this work is the variety of human situations it involves. I have helped tech professionals navigate concentrated equity exposure during severe market drawdowns. I have worked with executives on Net Unrealized Appreciation strategies to manage tax exposure on highly appreciated employer stock. I have helped doctors and dentists structure Defined Benefit plans to meaningfully reduce their tax brackets. I have coordinated charitable giving strategies that align with a family's values while reducing tax exposure. I have walked clients through market corrections when their instinct was to panic, and helped them stay with the plan that would actually carry them to the retirement they wanted. I have worked with beneficiaries on intentional gifting strategies to manage estate exposure.

Along the way, I have been fortunate to contribute my financial expertise at technology companies including Intuit and Google — work that sharpened my conviction that the future belongs to durable, profitable innovators with real moats: companies built on disciplined data, real infrastructure, and serious R&D. That conviction is now the spine of how I build portfolios for clients.

I have also taught the next generation of CFP® professionals at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, because the profession needs people who do this work with integrity, and that work has to be passed on. Watching students discover the same passion I found in middle school is one of the most rewarding parts of what I do.

The boy who studied stock charts with his father is still here, decades later, still studying the markets, still drawn to the same question: how do you put capital — and disciplined planning — behind the companies and the people actually building the future? That is the work. I am honored to do it.