Financial complexity tends to arrive quietly. One year you're managing a straightforward portfolio; the next, you're navigating equity compensation schedules, multi-state tax obligations, trust structures, and a growing sense that the pieces of your financial life are being managed in isolation rather than in concert.
Cantata serves individuals and families navigating complex financial decisions across investment strategy, cash flow, tax coordination, estate planning, and long-term capital stewardship, including those managing sophisticated compensation structures and leadership responsibilities. When planning extends beyond a single individual to encompass a household and multiple generations, the work changes in character: balancing the goals and values of parents, children (and sometimes grandchildren), each with different financial needs, risk tolerances, and time horizons. And when a spouse or partner who managed the family's finances passes away, the surviving partner faces an enormous financial transition on top of an emotional one. We work as a coordinated team alongside our clients' tax, legal, and estate advisors to build financial plans that reflect the complete picture rather than isolated parts, and to provide continuity and guidance when circumstances change.
We provide:
As a fee-only Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), we are legally and ethically bound to act in our clients’ best interests. Accordingly, our recommendations are made solely with that fiduciary duty in mind (we do not earn commissions from product sales). For individuals managing substantial and complex wealth, that alignment matters.
Co-founder Kevin Barry, CFA®, CFP® leads Cantata's investment management and brings decades of experience across institutional and individual portfolio oversight. Kevin's career includes leading the U.S. Fixed Income Investment Team for Credit Suisse, managing portfolios as a partner and portfolio manager for Caxton & Associates (a Global Macro Hedge Fund in New York), and serving as the Chief Investment Officer of Captrust, a rapidly growing RIA where he managed $60 billion in assets under management (AUM) and over half a trillion dollars of assets under advisement (AUA). He applies the same institutional discipline and risk-first thinking to the individual and family portfolios he manages at Cantata.
Co-founder Christina Kramlich, CFP®, CAP® brings deep experience in holistic financial planning and a deep-seated commitment to serving women in leadership. Christina's career spans technology investment banking, early-stage fintech, and independent fee-only financial planning. She was an early team member at SoFi, where she helped launch several business development initiatives and later honed her financial planning practice at Chicory Wealth, an independent fee-only firm. Her Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® (CAP®) designation reflects a focus on helping clients integrate giving into their broader financial plans. She serves on the board of Project Glimmer (a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to serving at-risk girls and women), where she previously served as Board Chair and finance committee chair.
Co-founder Gregory Cheng, CWS® brings extensive experience in financial advisor development and practice management from leadership roles at Morgan Stanley, Sterne Agee, and BNY's Pershing Advisor Solutions. Greg's ability to see the full picture of a client's financial life and to build advisor teams that deliver coordinated planning is central to how Cantata serves individuals and families.
While we serve individuals and families across a range of circumstances, we bring particular depth to three areas where our team's expertise runs deepest.
Senior professionals and executives often accumulate financial complexity faster than they accumulate the time to manage it. Equity compensation in the form of RSUs, stock options, and performance shares can quietly become the dominant driver of net worth, while deferred compensation plans, partnership interests, and ownership stakes introduce layers of tax and liquidity planning that standard financial advice can miss. Add to the mix insider trading windows, 10b5-1 plan considerations, and multi-state tax exposure, and the coordination challenge becomes significant.
Where we start. We listen acutely. We work to understand the full scope of a client's compensation structure, ownership interests, and professional trajectory before we recommend anything. What are the vesting schedules? What liquidity events are on the horizon? How concentrated is the portfolio in a single company or asset class? These conversations shape everything that follows.
Why Cantata. We risk sensibly. Kevin's institutional investment background means our clients benefit from the same caliber of risk management and portfolio construction typically reserved for large institutional investors. Greg's years of mentoring and developing financial advisor teams have shaped how Cantata approaches coordinated planning, ensuring that the full scope of a client's financial life is considered rather than managed in pieces.
Our areas of focus:
Women in senior professional roles face many of the same compensation and planning complexities as their peers, but they also navigate financial realities that the wealth management industry has historically been slow to address. Longer life expectancies, career paths more likely to include pivots or interruptions, and a persistent gap in how advisors engage with women as primary financial decision-makers all shape the planning conversation. Christina has seen that gap firsthand and repeatedly: a woman asks a question in a meeting and the advisor answers her husband. Sadly, that kind of tone-deafness is still prevalent in the industry, and the consequences are measurable. An oft-cited industry statistic holds that 70% of widows fire their husband's financial advisor within 12 months of his passing¹, reflecting years of accumulated disregard. Building trust takes longer when someone has spent a career fighting to be heard.
Where we start. We listen acutely without assumptions and at the client's pace. Whether a client is building wealth through equity compensation at a public company, navigating a career transition, or stepping into the role of primary financial decision-maker for the first time, we begin by understanding her goals, her concerns, and the financial complexity she's managing on her own terms. Christina often finds that the relationship develops over time. A prospective client will have an initial conversation, go away for a while, and come back months later saying she appreciated the way certain topics were explored. Rushing that process doesn't work. Being a genuine thought partner means being willing to unravel the layers at her pace.
Why Cantata. Christina's career, from technology investment banking/private placements at Montgomery Securities to early-stage fintech leadership at SoFi to independent financial planning, gives her firsthand understanding of the professional and financial landscape that women in leadership navigate. She's managed her own restricted stock units (RSUs) and equity, made her own investing decisions as a limited partner (LP), and experienced or observed the pivots that shape a woman's financial life such as career transitions, planning for children's education, aging parents, divorce, and widowhood. Her work with Project Glimmer and her Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® (CAP®) designation reflect a commitment to empowering women that extends well beyond portfolio management. From a risk management perspective, Kevin notes that among the highest-earning American women, life expectancy increased by nearly three years between 2001 and 2014,² a trend likely accelerating even before GLP-1 drugs and other medical advances. For these clients, the biggest risk probably isn't a down market next year—it's a longer life and higher inflation. They need a portfolio built to account for both.
Our areas of focus:
For families supporting a member with special needs, including individuals living with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), the planning stakes are exceptionally high. Trust structures, benefit preservation, long-term care coordination, and guardianship considerations all require careful, ongoing attention. And the financial dimension is only part of it. These families are managing medical relationships, legal frameworks, and day-to-day caregiving demands that most financial advisors have never encountered up close.
Cantata's focus on this space grew from a personal connection. Greg began conversations with an attorney who litigates in the TBI space and those conversations led to a deeper commitment to explore the space as it aligns with Cantata’s core values of the dignity of life, community, collaboration, and doing both well and good. A friend with a son who had sustained a traumatic brain injury put it plainly: "All my advisors want to manage my son's money, but they don't want to manage him. And what happens when my wife and I are no longer here to care for him?" That question became a catalyst. The team has since spent time with trust companies specializing in special needs, with National Care Advisors (a network of over a hundred nurses nationwide who specialize in this space), and with neuro-scientists to better understand the medical, legal, and financial dimensions of brain injury.
Where we start. We listen acutely. Our starting point is the broader family dynamic. Not just the person who initiated the conversation, but the needs and concerns of siblings, aging parents, and the individuals receiving care. In special needs situations every case is deeply individual. As Kevin notes, a typical retiree's financial trajectory follows a fairly predictable arc. With TBI, expenses don't move in a straight line. They can spike significantly when a complication arises, and the timing of that jump matters for how the portfolio is structured and how risk is managed. An incident may occur months before the full financial impact materializes and understanding that lag is critical to building a portfolio that can absorb it.
Why Cantata. For families navigating the financial dimensions of a serious injury, a prolonged illness, or the loss of a loved one, our commitment is to bring the patience, sensitivity, and coordination these situations demand. The coordination piece is especially important—even families with significant wealth often lack the networks and connections to the specialists who do this work every day. Part of our method is helping build that support structure: connecting families with the right trust companies, care advisors, legal counsel, and medical professionals, and ensuring all of those relationships work together over time. When someone experiences a life-altering event, they typically don't know what that world looks like. If we can help map the path and introduce the people who navigate it every day, that represents some of the most meaningful work this practice is built to do.
Our areas of focus:
Cantata Wealth has offices in Miami, San Francisco, and Raleigh, and is available to clients nationwide. If you're looking for an advisor who will take the time to understand the full complexity of your financial life, we would welcome the conversation. We are, as always, ready to listen.
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Cantata Wealth is a fee-only Registered Investment Advisor (RIA). This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Please consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.
