The posting
About White Oak
White Oak Enterprises is a professional family office and investment platform committed to responsible ownership, long-term value creation, and social impact. We manage investments, operating businesses, and financial affairs for one multigenerational family. Our team operates as an integrated in-house accounting, tax, investment, and real estate development organization.
We support 16 adult households across three generations, along with the trusts, foundations, and entities that sit behind them.
Until now, the public securities investment advice our family members receive has come from trusted and sophisticated outside advisors. We've decided to build that capability internally, and this is the first position we're hiring for it. Whoever fills it will have a great deal to say about what the function becomes.
The Role
Most of the family members you'll be advising don't work in finance. They're intelligent people who have never had much reason to learn what a basis point is. If you tell them their portfolio has a strong Sharpe ratio and they nod along because they don't want to admit they have no idea what you just said, then the conversation hasn't been productive, even if everything you told them was accurate.
We are building an advisory function where nobody has to pretend to understand their financial picture. Our hope is that family members will learn from you, come to better understand how their assets are invested, and grow into confident stewards of the family's wealth.
What You Will Own
The portfolios. You will own the public-market portfolios supporting the families and entities we serve, managing them against each account's goals, risk profile, tax circumstances, and liquidity needs. That covers setting asset allocation and portfolio strategy for individuals, trusts, foundations, and other entities. You will also direct rebalancing and trades through our custody platform and evaluate outside managers where it makes sense, particularly during the transition from the external relationships we have today, which we expect to take at least 6-9 months.
The liquidity strategy. For many of the people we support, total wealth is substantial, but a meaningful share is illiquid, which makes liquidity one of the more consequential parts of this job. You will anticipate what's coming, whether that's spending, taxes, trust distributions, grants, a major purchase, debt service, or a capital call, and decide how each need should be met.
You won't own the execution long term. We've budgeted a client relationship manager to be hired once you're in place, and you'll help define that role and choose the person. Until then you'll be closer to the mechanics than you will be later. That's deliberate, since it's easier to specify the role well once you've done the work yourself.
Trusts and foundations. The picture here extends well beyond individual investment accounts. We support more than 50 trusts and more than 10 foundations, and you will provide the planning, portfolio, and liquidity perspective across them. That means connecting trust objectives to beneficiary needs and distributions, and connecting a foundation's investment strategy to its grantmaking and long-term sustainability, alongside colleagues with deeper expertise in trusts and estates, tax, and philanthropy.
The function itself. How planning works here, what an annual review ought to cover, what family members can expect from us and how often. These things don't exist yet, so you will be designing the program rather than inheriting someone else's version.
The full picture. No one at White Oak holds the complete financial picture today. Family members, our team, and outside advisors each hold pieces of it. Your job is to bring them together, actively seeking information and knowing when to involve colleagues who go deeper on private investments, accounting, taxes, estate planning, and philanthropy. Strong relationships across the office and with the family will be essential.
Who We're Looking For
There's no single resume that describes the right person. You might be at an RIA, a major wirehouse, a broker-dealer, a private bank, a multifamily office, or a trust company. You may hold a senior title already, or you may have been given considerably more responsibility than your title suggests. We encourage you to apply for this role even if you do not fit 100% of the points below. We hire for attributes over experience.
- You explain things well, and you probably already know it, because people have been telling you so for years.
- You have real experience advising high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth families, and you've owned those relationships rather than served in a supporting role.
- You'd rather deepen a relationship than open a new one.
- You understand markets, asset allocation, portfolio construction, and risk well enough to hold your own with a sophisticated family member and then explain the same idea an hour later to someone with no background at all.
- You think in terms of cash flow, taxes, leverage, and competing claims on capital without needing to be prompted.
- You form a view and say what it is, including to people more senior than you, and you can do that without talking down to anyone.
- You notice what needs to happen and take it on rather than waiting to be asked.
- You're careful with detail, and you're the sort of person who catches a cost-basis error or a beneficiary designation nobody ever updated.
- You know when someone else knows more than you do, and you bring them in rather than work around them.
- You want to build something and then stay responsible for it once it's built.
- You may hold the CFP®, CPWA®, CFA®, CPA, an MBA, or other relevant credentials. They're welcome, but we care more about demonstrated experience, judgment, and ability than about letters after your name.
Why This Role Is Different
Traditional advisory careers tend to pull people toward selling. You will not have to prospect for AUM here. You will still have to build trusted relationships with family members, as you would with any client, but you'll have the time to focus on people rather than quotas.
Compensation
Base salary is benchmarked against comparable family office and private bank advisory roles in this market, with a performance-based annual bonus, full health and dental coverage, PTO, and a 401(k).
Location
This position is based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, with offices in Fulton, Maryland, and Northern Virginia. Regular in-person interaction with family members and colleagues is essential to the role. Candidates currently outside the Washington area who are genuinely interested in relocating should not let geography alone prevent them from applying.
