Maria Chrin: Bringing Women into the Investment Circle
Founder and Managing Partner, Circle Wealth Management, LLC
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/maria-l-chrin/72/173/542
Bio:
Maria is the founder and managing partner of Circle Wealth Management (CWM), is an independent investment advisory and wealth management firm with offices in New York City and Summit, New Jersey. The firm provides customized services and tailored investment solutions to high net worth families and foundations, with a focus on women investors.
Innovating in Field of Work:
• In 2004, Maria left Goldman Sachs after co-founding Circle Financial Group (CFG), a peer organization for senior executive women to learn about every aspect of investment and wealth management. After several years of collaborative thinking at CFG, she founded CWM in 2007 and focused on a new wealth management model which challenged the traditional status quo in four main ways: 1) empowering clients by providing financial education; 2) Assuring full alignment of interest, eating their own cooking, and being paid exclusively by their clients; 3) demanding full transparency on behalf of clients from banks, trust companies & investment managers; 4) providing clients with unique access to the best products, the best fees, and the best thinking from multiple thought leaders and firms.
• Maria is a passionate advocate of supporting innovative businesses which challenge the traditional way of delivering financial services. She continues to provide seed capital to new ventures such as LearnVest, a company which provides on an online platform for cost-efficient financial planning and provides portfolio management advice through certified financial planners.
Impact:
• Maria focuses on a segment that is underserved by traditional financial institutions.
• For the past 7 years, Maria has built CWM to serve as a role model and be an inspiration to others. She is committed to empowering those around her and proving that gender does not determine investment acumen. At CWM, 75% of the firm’s partners and team are women and 80% of the clients are high net worth women and their families. The firm’s collaborative and results-oriented model is desirable to all clients, regardless of gender.
• Maria and her partners actively mentor the firm’s entire team, men and women, while focusing on building a culture that embodies strong teamwork, commitment, and exceptional client service.
Role Model:
• Born and raised in Honduras, Maria earned a scholarship to attend Lehigh University, graduated Summa Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa and got her MBA from Columbia Business School. Her endless determination to work on Wall Street provided the foundation for her success at Goldman Sachs and CWM while her loyalty and deep roots helped her maintain the strong family and philanthropic ideals that she grew up learning from her family in Honduras.
• While at Goldman Sachs, she was an active recruiter of Columbia Business School students, attracting and then mentoring them for years after joining the firm.
Reinvention / Momentum:
• Maria has prioritized education as her family’s major philanthropic endeavor. By raising awareness and personally creating scholarships and internships for women students at Lehigh, Columbia Business School, and Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has helped generate multiple opportunities for women and girls.
• She is the first woman to Chair Lehigh’s Endowment Investment Committee. Her term began during the financial crisis and her leadership helped the committee and investment team navigate well during this time.
• Her focus on education and financial empowerment of women led her to become a board member of Women Moving Millions in 2014.
In an industry where there are so few visible women leaders, Maria is emerging as one of them. “I witness Maria constantly iterating and expanding her circles of friends and of influence.”