Benjamin Greenfeld, Partner and Chief Investment Officer, Waldron Private Wealth

In an interview with Invest:, Benjamin Greenfeld, Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Waldron Private Wealth, talked about handling client family dynamics, the importance of their internship program, and why Pittsburgh is a great place to do business in. “Our belief is that wealth can be used as a resource, it shouldn’t be a crutch,” he shared.

Over the past year, what major changes have shaped Waldron’s direction as a firm?

More of our clients continue to ask for services beyond traditional wealth management. We have really expanded and spent a lot of time over the last few years working with our clients’ children and future generations to educate them on wealth, and their family’s philosophy and goals for their wealth. Another solution we’ve been asked to provide is what we call personal CFO services, which refers to bill pay, accounting, cash flow tracking, etc. We’ve also been working on risk management to help our clients protect what they have built. 

In the last few years, as we’ve gotten closer to the sunsetting of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, we’ve done a lot of planning with clients to help utilize exemption and plan for the future prior to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) this year, which made those tax increases permanent.

How do you educate clients and their families when it comes to wealth management?

Over the last 12 months, we’ve been investing from both a hard dollar and time standpoints to train our staff in making them more effective at facilitating family meetings and family dynamics conversations. We want our team to be comfortable talking with our clients about all types of matters, such as future considerations of the family’s wealth and decision making process, marriage and prenuptial agreements, and more. We’re also working with clients to develop a post-education support plan. For example, when their children graduate from college, what will that look like? Up until that point, they’ve been supported by the family, and they may have trusts that are available to them resource-wise. But what is the family’s philosophy on how those resources should be used? Do they want them to get a job and this is meant to be a supplement,  Or is it meant to buy a house, or help start a business? Every family is different, and we start by working with the matriarch and patriarch to understand what their wishes are for their wealth. Then we can help have those conversations with their children and grandchildren to help them be more prepared. What we often find is that by the time their children and grandchildren are adults, their parents have guided them to who they’re going to be. Our belief is that wealth can be used as a resource, not a crutch.

What steps has Waldron taken to attract, develop, and retain top talent, and what are your goals for strengthening culture and collaboration across the firm?

We have expanded our geographical footprint to have physical offices outside of Pittsburgh. We opened offices in Philadelphia, Detroit, and DC. Pittsburgh is obviously a great community, but there’s a lot of people fishing in the same pond for talent. We thought if we can expand outward, and these are areas we’re already going to go, let’s try to hire people there and further grow our business. We also have had people start working for us in Pittsburgh and then move to the new offices.

Our internship program draws from local universities, but we now have also started hiring interns from universities in the Philadelphia and Detroit areas, which has been great. Our internship is not just administrative; it is very professional and hands-on. Our interns are truly helping with actual work, like preparing reports and analyzing data. They are really doing what I would consider as entry-level work and getting to know the business and industry.  Our interns from other cities come to Pittsburgh during the summer. We provide them housing and resources, when they are in Pittsburgh for the summer and then they go back and continue to work in our offices in the other cities during the academic year. We’ve had some of our interns who graduated from school in Pittsburgh accept full-time offers and relocate to work in our other offices. We are strong believers in training our talent. Additionally, one of our cultural pillars is that we’re collaborative. Working together to make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction is key for us.

What recent innovations or digital tools have you found most valuable, and how do they fit into your future priorities?

We very much believe in relationships being face-to-face with clients. Prior to COVID and the use of video calls, we would typically go meet with our clients in person. We still believe that is the best way to do it to help  build meaningful relationships with our clients. Even with our staff, we believe the best way for people to learn and develop is by being together. Our culture is very much built on being together. But with that said, we still use video meetings and other technology to supplement in-person meetings. They’re great for having a technical meeting in between our in-person visits with our clients. 

We have certainly embraced AI as it relates to our industry. It’s a great tool for things like creating workflow processes, and writing, amongst others. We have a formal forum where employees can submit technology ideas, then a technology committee looks at it and, if it makes sense, pilots it.  It is part of our entrepreneurial culture.

How do you see the local business and investment landscape evolving in Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh continues to grow. From a real estate perspective, there are new office spaces around town, which makes Pittsburgh geographically desirable to be in. Also, housing is affordable in Pittsburgh. We’re about to have a new airport terminal opening. Earlier this year, the U.S. Open golf tournament at Oakmont brought a ton of people in. Next year, the NFL draft will be hosted in Pittsburgh. I think you’re getting a lot of traction in the area. Pittsburgh’s a great community as well. Everybody knows everybody, or rather you know somebody who knows somebody, and that makes it a tight-knit community. We’re committed to Pittsburgh being our headquarters. 

As you look ahead to the next two to three years, what are your top goals and priorities for the firm?

Our top goals are to continue growing and evolving. Our goal is to recruit good talent and foster an environment where our advisors can continually develop to better serve our clients. We want to continue evolving our service offerings to our clients to hit the ever-changing landscape of needs of the families we work with, both from a financial and a non-financial standpoint.