Closing 2024 with a Look to the Future
By: Richard Todd | CEO, Principal & Co-Founder
Despite a once-in-a-lifetime bizarre election year, the markets were very good, and client returns were excellent in ’24. We appreciate the incredible client trust, loyalty, and robust new business growth as we experienced our best year in our 28-year history. We promise our clients that they will benefit from our growth, which requires adding high-quality professionals to our team. We welcomed Blanca Quintanilla, Luke Hollister, Sydney Armstrong, and Teri Tomei to Innovest in 2024. We finished the year with 60 employees, of which 21 are partners. Kathy Lalone, Sarah Newman, Dustin Roberts, Kyli Soto, and Frank Cornett became partners, making a big financial commitment to Innovest! The key to our success is keeping professionals on our team for the long term and continually improving our culture, which also leads to an outstanding client experience. Our yearly employee retention is 95%.
Pensions & Investments (P&I) honored Innovest with the “Best Places to Work in Money Management” award for the tenth time in eleven years. Each year, our professionals submit detailed survey responses about our firm, practices, and culture to P&I. After being compared to hundreds of candidates, P&I selects a few distinguished firms as a “Best Place to Work.” The survey also provides us with the responses that highlight what we do well and where we need improvement. We are proud of the way Innovest stacks up in the industry.
We honor top team members with annual awards. Christine Attai earned our Service to Others award, Marisa Joseph received the 212 Degree award, Frank Cornett was recognized with the Bill Fender Mentorship award, and Christian O’Dwyer was presented with our top yearly honor, the Founders’ Award. We are privileged to work with such outstanding professionals. This year, Innovest received four awards from the investment and business communities. We are proud of our team and the professionals who advanced this year. Anna Berdhal, Austin Cleveland, Christine Attai, Frank Cornett, Ian Gilbert, Joanne Cinalli, John Walsh, Marisa Joseph, Natalie Miller, Sydney Aeschlimann, and Taylor Smith progressed at Innovest this year. We are proud of our team and the professionals who have advanced throughout the year.
We continually strive to be thought leaders in the industry. In 2024, we gave speeches at various conferences for business leaders, investors, and fiduciaries, and journals, magazines, newspapers, and blogs published our thoughts 44 times. In addition, seven podcasts and television shows interviewed our professionals.
To provide more expertise and support to both our nonprofit and family clients, we launched IPS Philanthropy Architects (IPSPA). Joining forces with renowned nonprofit giving expert Greg Ring, IPSPA specializes in unlocking the untapped potential of donors in often overlooked giving channels, such as contributions from business ownership, real estate, royalties, collectibles, and other assets. We offer nonprofits and families tools to expand potential gifts and enhance an organization’s long-term sustainability through creative, complex gift strategies. Greg Ring brings over 40 years of experience helping over 200 ministries and nonprofits develop planned giving programs, resulting in more than $4 billion in documented gifts.
Being engaged in the community is important at Innovest. We budget 1% of our revenue for charity and spend many hours working to help those in need. Every month, we select an engagement partner, allowing our professionals to volunteer during company time. We volunteered for many organizations throughout the year, including Food Bank of the Rockies, Colorado Uplift, Habitat for Humanity, Make A Wish Foundation, and the DPS Foundation among others. We collectively gave the community more than 2,350 service hours this year. Innovest continues to partner with Arrupe Jesuit High School. We employ four Arrupe students as interns, and their pay offsets part of their tuition costs. We were proud to have them on our team as we closed the year.
Our just completed annual client survey reflected very solid scores. Our clients gave us a score of 4.8 out of 5.0, confirming their overall satisfaction.
We owe tremendous gratitude to our clients! Clients and other friends of Innovest have been the primary source of referrals over the last quarter century. Continued growth is crucial for both our new partners who have invested in our firm and the new opportunities it brings for all our professionals.
We wish you a wonderful 2025, and from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for a prosperous 2024!