The human capital issue is one of the most challenging facing the advisor community — finding successors to advisory firm founders and the related issue of attracting and retaining advisors who mirror the current gender, racial and ethnic diversity of the country (and advisors' current and prospective client bases).
Envestnet's own leadership has changed over the years. Founded in 1999 by current chairman and CEO Jud Bergman with colleagues including President Bill Crager, Executive Vice President James Lumberg and Brandon Thomas, CIO of Envestnet | PMC, the firm has added key members to its management team, partly through the acquisition of the companies they led, notably Lincoln Ross and Tim Clift from FundQuest, Gib Watson from Prima Capital, Stuart DePina from Tamarac and most recently Anil Arora from Yodlee.
In an interview in December 2016, Crager noted that Envestnet happens to be "one of the rare instances of a financial services company being run by two English majors" (himself and Bergman, who has a Columbia MBA while Crager double-majored in English and Economics), while "our COO [Josh Mayer] is a philosophy/theology major; he's the best problem solver I've ever met in my life."
