COVER STORY
Kristen Bauer
CEO LNW Seattle
Marguerita Cheng
Chief Executive Officer Blue Ocean Global Wealth Gaithersburg, Md.
Serendipity And A Storied Firm
Kristen Bauer’ s career in the advisory world has been graced with a certain degree of serendipity. She was a young 28-year-old accountant at Arthur Andersen when a client, George Russell of Frank Russell & Co., sold his pension consulting business to Northwestern Mutual in 1998 for $ 1.2 billion. His son-in-law asked Bauer to join a soon-to-be-formed single family office.
Bauer admits she was hardly an investment professional( that was Russell’ s forte), but she was knowledgeable about taxes, accounting and philanthropy. The single-family office,( first called Sunshine Investment Management, then later the Threshold Group) eventually started taking clients with $ 100 million or more. The firm grew to about 50 families with $ 3.6 billion by 2017, when it was sold to Tiedemann Wealth Management.
The runner-up in the bidding for Threshold was Laird Norton, the Seattle-based multi-family office founded in the 1850s. In 2020, Bauer received a call from the Pacific Northwest firm. Its CEO was retiring, and its owners were looking for a successor.
She was happy at Tiedemann, but agreed to talk.“ I went from not interested to saying,‘ Wow!’” She ultimately accepted an offer on March 3, 2020, right before the pandemic flared up.
Laird Norton was a new challenge. Although it traced its roots to managing money and trusts for some of the timber families that built the Pacific Northwest, it was expanding and accepting clients who were working in many of the region’ s emerging industries. Today, the firm, whose parent entity remains a trust company, has $ 18 billion under advisement and serves clients with anywhere from $ 3 million to, in a few cases, more than $ 1 billion.
Early in 2021, Bauer received a call from Deb Wetherby, who had built an RIA powerhouse in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wetherby was looking to sell. After they spent a long day together in Palm Springs, they“ walked out arm in arm” with a merger underway.
They viewed the transaction through the same lens and realized they had to resolve three questions about the deal:“ Is this better for, one, the clients; two, the employees; and three, the owners?” Bauer says.
In assets, the firms were equals: Laird Norton had $ 7.5 billion and Wetherby had $ 7 billion. Bauer says that in the merger’ s wake, Wetherby’ s name remains an asset, and she’ s still on the board as an active participant. They waited two years to change the new entity’ s name to LNW, taking care not to disrupt the client experience.
Bauer says that her clients are currently concerned most about the financial markets and whether they are in a bubble. But the bigger question behind headline issues is“ how to make sure [ clients’] children honor the values of the family.”
And as a predominantly West Coast firm, LNW is carefully watching the rash of wealth tax proposals, including a Washington state estate tax of 35 % for estates over $ 9 million. Not surprisingly, the firm’ s clients are starting“ lots of conversations about changing residency.”
— Evan Simonoff
A Career-Changer On A Mission
Marguerita Cheng had her mind set on becoming a financial planner and nothing was going to stop her from pursuing that goal.
She started out working in corporate finance at a Japanese brokerage firm as an editor / translator and junior analyst.“ It was great experience, but something was missing,” she says.
Her journey to becoming a financial planner began with guiding family members and her community on managing student loan and credit card debts and buying a house. That gained her the credibility and confidence she needed to help people work toward what’ s important to them, she says.“ I fell in love with the ability to use my analytical problem-solving skills and people skills to change conversations about money and wealth.”
In 1999, Cheng landed a job with Ameriprise Financial Services. She admits to being a“ bit shocked” at the industry’ s demographics.“ I didn’ t realize how few people there were that looked like me,” Cheng says, noting that she was not just referring to her ethnicity or gender, but also the fact that she was a career-changer with two children, a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old.
She says a lot of leaders questioned her later start in the profession, doubting she could be successful with two young children. But she would not be deterred.“ I didn’ t react or snap back. I really reflected on what that person said, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt.”
She passed four required exams in six weeks and became a certified financial planner in 2004. She remained with Ameriprise until 2013, when she founded financial planning firm Blue Ocean Global Wealth. Her client base is made up of“ regular people,” many of whom are mission driven, she says. She also works with retired federal employees from the many biotech companies in Maryland.
Reflecting on the importance of women in the industry, Cheng says,“ Women are valuable as part of the financial planning process because we wear a variety of hats and can relate and connect with what the clients are experiencing in a way where people feel seen, heard and respected. And that’ s something very powerful.”
Cheng says she believes in creating a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for clients.“ You want to be able to direct people and guide them. But most importantly, you need to make yourself referable by just treating people with kindness and care, and of course, technical expertise.”
And one of the most important pieces of advice Cheng says she can pass on to young women entering the profession is to commit to being a lifelong learner.“ Make sure that you have opportunities for that lifelong learning as well as personal and professional development,” she says.
Additionally, Cheng emphasizes the importance of joining professional associations and communities where you can meet and connect with other people.
— Jacqueline Sergeant
34 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | MARCH / APRIL 2026 WWW. FA-MAG. COM