Christina Lewis, founder of Beatrice Advisors, in her home office with a portrait of her father, Reginald Lewis.
Cindy Johnson
Christina Lewis had her first asset allocation meeting with her wealth manager when she was 13 years old.
“I remember the meeting well,” Lewis said. “It was a turbulent time for my family. AND [the advisor] He was the only one who had the information he needed and [knew] how to talk to me about this new world I found myself in.”
That new world involved tragic loss and sudden inheritance. His father, Reginald Lewis, founder of food giant TLC Beatrice International and the first African-American to build a billion-dollar revenue business, died at the age of 50 from a brain hemorrhage. Christina was left with a large fortune and few answers.
Over the next 30 years, Lewis would work with six different institutional wealth managers and 12 different relationship managers. Her experience and success in forming her own family office and running two of her foundations have led her to her new company: a multi-family office aimed at the next generation, aimed at people like her.
“It's about families and their assets and how you think about them,” he said. “When you are inclusive, when you look at diverse perspectives, when you empower women, when you empower your children, when you educate your clients, when you allow them authority, autonomy and independence, that is a better way to live. Your family will be healthier, wealthier, happier and more functional.”
Lewis' company, called Beatrice Advisors, aims to change the traditional business of managing the fortunes of the wealthy and heirs. With more than $84 trillion expected to be passed down from older to younger generations in the next 30 years, according to estimates by Cerulli Associates, a market research firm, Beatrice aims to be at the forefront of wealth management. of the heirs.
Beatrice Advisors aims to make education and accessibility paramount, as many young heirs will be new to wealth management, Lewis said. It will welcome a more diverse group of wealth holders in terms of race, ethnicity and gender. And it will take a “holistic approach” to a family's assets, considering not just their money but also their values, skills and life paths, Lewis said.
Since today's younger generations are more focused on technology, the advisory firm has spent years creating a high-tech dashboard that gives families a unified, up-to-date view of their portfolio and assets.
“We build the dashboard and advise customers, but they drive the car,” he said.
Multifamily offices like Beatrice combine the hyper-personalized and confidential approach of a single-family office (managing the fortunes and logistics of a family) with the shared costs and resources of an investment firm.
In addition to managing investments, multifamily offices often manage taxes, trusts, family governance, philanthropy and legal issues. A growing number of ultra-wealthy families are turning to multifamily offices to make generational wealth transitions, given their expertise in family wealth dynamics and governance.
Lewis' personal investment education began when he was 7 years old, when he helped his father manage his stock portfolio. In addition to owning his own company, Reginald Lewis had a personal stock portfolio and appointed Christina as his “broker.”
“I would read the stock charts in the newspaper in the morning,” he said, “and then at the end of the day, after the market closed, I would call to get the afternoon close. And he had this notebook where he recorded everything.”
After his father died, he worked with his first wealth manager to pick stocks and build an aggressive portfolio. Among his stock picks: disney and Limited “because we talk about investing in what I know.”
Over the years, their wealth advisors have constantly changed: companies have been acquired and their relationship managers have changed year after year. He said it was difficult to find an asset manager “who looks at it for you, not just as an appendage to another entity”.
Eventually, he created a family office, BFO21, and hired his own team. Beatrice will be separate from BF021, but she will have common team members and share best practices, investments and experience.
Meredith Bowen, a former partner at Seven Bridges Advisors who is now president and chief investment officer of Beatrice, said the advisory firm will place a high priority on tax efficiency and tailored tax structures.
“We're really trying to create an investment infrastructure that's specific to each individual taxpayer's landscape,” Bowen said.
Beatrice will target clients with a net worth between $25 million and $300 million, although Bowen said “larger families will get a lot out of us.”
An active philanthropist, Lewis founded All Star Code, a nonprofit organization that provides young people of color with basic coding and web skills. He also co-founded Giving Gap, formerly Give Blck, a searchable database of vetted, Black-founded nonprofits. She is also vice president of the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation.
Lewis said that by making heritage councils accessible to a more diverse and younger population, she hopes to help more families like hers.
“When I was looking for companies, I wanted that alignment with the clients' values and style,” he said. “I feel like [Beatrice] It will be diverse and inclusive from the beginning.”
