ALTFAMILYOFFICE
Non-financial advisory for family offices
Lambent Consulting helps principals and families decide what their money should do, and how it affects the people closest to them.
What money means
Most wealth services focus on growing and preserving money, with bankers, accountants and estate lawyers. ALTFamilyOffice focuses on what money means: how it will be used, how it affects individuals, couples and families at key life stages, and how you can own your money not only by investing it but by designing its impact, role and function.
ALTFamilyOffice gives you a place to think through what to do with money, alongside a consultant who doesn’t deal in platitudes. The process is open, practical and free of judgment. We pay attention to best practices and precedents for distributing resources within families, and that includes time, respect and support as well as money.
The goal is for principals to make informed choices in line with their values. You have room to speak freely and find out where you stand, whatever the optics.
Fast consulting
Consulting is one-on-one with the principal and begins with a complimentary 30-minute call to assess fit.
We work pragmatically, without judgment, and often very quickly. We aren’t looking to become a long-term advisor or coach. We can arrange sequential conversations with several stakeholders, but often the work is three calls with the principal. By the end the issue has been reframed or resolved, or we’ve identified other resources. If you need a highly developed platform, other firms can provide one.
Our approach isn’t pro forma or prescriptive. We generally believe families know what they’re doing. Most are facing common issues that need to be put into a clear framework. We have a strong track record of taking the heaviness and fear out of problems around money.
Staff-related consulting
Lambent provides household staff (personal assistants, house managers), corporate staff (executive assistants, chiefs of staff) and family office staff. We are especially well equipped to help you evaluate the quality of the support you have now.
Having money has obvious benefits, but managing it has a cost. Running lives that are big and complex takes a great deal of time. A common mistake is to spend more on things (homes, clothes, travel) than on support staff, and that creates stress. Your budget should include enough help to manage what you have.
The people who work for you also need to be chosen very carefully. Employees who work closely with a family have an outsized effect on their employers' quality of life. Beyond skill set, you and your family need support matched closely to who you are as people, as a family, and to how you spend your time. ALTFO finds solutions to staffing problems, whether that means changing how you use your current employees or finding new ones.
Outside the box thinking
All ALTFO consulting is done by Lambent CEO Jill Glist, MA, Clinical Psychology. Jill has more than 5 years of experience as a systems-based structural family therapist and 10 years of experience in psychodynamic individual therapy at the NYU psychology clinic. She brings these frameworks to her consulting and treats work and family environments as systems that have to be understood both in their parts and as a whole.
Jill also comes from a large, complicated family with its own Boston-based family office, so she knows the challenges of intergenerational wealth firsthand. With 20 years of staffing UHNW families, she brings an unusual and flexible perspective to helping people handle interpersonal issues within their families and staff.
Staff-related problems we have addressed
- Your assistant says she doesn't have enough time to help both you and your wife.
The finance director of your family office pays your son's bills, and they are sometimes late. Your son doesn't feel comfortable complaining and is in a bind.
- Your house manager does everything right, but you don't feel comfortable around her.
Your executive assistant is less effective than she used to be, and you don't know why.