With more than 20 years of experience in the financial sector, Liz Miller exemplifies truly inspiring leadership. Her vision and tactics have enabled her to identify an unserved niche and lead her firm to stand out in a crowded industry. With passion and a strategic focus on long-term goals, Liz Miller serves as the President of Summit Place Financial Advisors, LLC.
A blend of expertise, strategic vision, determination, and integrity describe Liz Miller in a nutshell. In her career spanning over three decades, Liz has served several roles that equipped her with a diverse skill set and expertise to lead in the financial industry. As an M&A analyst, then internal hedge fund security analyst with First Boston in the 1980s, Liz was on the leading edge of Wall Street’s boom in quantitative analysis. In the early 1990s, she joined Oppenheimer Mutual Funds and learned portfolio management.
“The more I learned of the mutual fund industry, the more I yearned to work more directly with clients that could benefit from my investing expertise.”
To work directly with individuals and institutions, Liz next joined an independent investment firm and went up the corporate ladder to become managing director and the head of equity research for Trevor, Stewart, Burton & Jacobsen in New York. Shortly after joining the firm, she started encountering questions related to many of the planning issues that successful families face. They would share that their accountant or attorney had brought up a planning topic but sent them to her for the next discussion. This is when Liz identified the need for successful families to seek the best personalized solutions. In 2008, Liz resigned her partnership and launched Summit Place Financial Advisors, LLC to provide comprehensive wealth management for families to help them coordinate and address all their financial needs.
Commitment to Empowering Team: Liz’s Leadership Style
Liz leads with a blend of clear strategic vision married to participatory engagement and support. Her leadership style underscores her values of collaboration and positive thinking. She stands out as a leader for her belief that every employee is capable of more than they realize. Liz is committed to helping her team grow and reach their own potential, which ultimately supports and serves the firm and clients.
Liz shares. “We have grown so much over the past 15 years, and my leadership has evolved as my team has gained experiences of their own. I see my role today as providing a strategic direction and framework that is filled in by my team members’ own vision, talents, and passions.”
Navigating Challenges and Inspiring
Being a leader is a challenge in itself. Liz’s biggest challenge as a leader, however, has been to stay flexible and empower other leaders in the firm. When she launched her business, she had a unique vision of a financial services firm. “I couldn’t look for other firms doing what I had planned. I had to have confidence that my ideas for multi-generational holistic advising would meet an unmet need in the marketplace. As clients were attracted to the model, I designed and defined the services and deliverables. As we grew, however, so did the industry.”
Today, Summit Place has evolved and continues to stay relevant and competitive, delivering the most desired services and advice to clients. Liz attributes the firm’s success to the experienced advisors who have brought not only expertise to clients, but also insightful viewpoints to the firm.
Staying True to Vision
Despite market trends, Summit Place has consistently grown by sticking to its unique client niche and truly adding value to clients’ experiences. Leading a start-up financial services firm, it was tempting to take on every client looking for an advisor, but Liz was true to her concept. She launched the firm to identify the needs of clients with $5-$25M in assets, who were looking for coordinated, holistic wealth expertise. She kept to her vision and continued to keep the team focused on its target clients.
Also, from the very beginning, Liz had the idea to include every generation of a family, as she recognized that strong relationships with younger generations could help assure family continuity, stewardship, and general accord. Long before the industry mentioned “millennials,” Summit Place was offering them dedicated service and advice as passionately as they do for their parents. This has helped keep the firm at the forefront of the highly competitive market.
Leaving Behind a Leadership Legacy
Effective leadership is all about empowering team members to excel and this is what Liz tries to lead with in mind. She once read, “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure the impact lasts in your absence.” As an effective leader, Liz is committed to help each of her team members to grow and flourish professionally and personally, being a part of the firm.
“When I think where my leadership takes the firm, I hope to develop internal leaders who value the culture I have created so much that every change they consider is seen through the lens of our culture of expertise, authenticity and integrity.”
Beyond just Business: Advice for Future Leaders
As a consummate entrepreneur, Liz believes that it takes many different characteristics to be successful in the financial industry. In addition to patience and perseverance, another thing that is most important is the understanding that lasting relationships grow over time. Carefully built relationships become the bedrock of one’s team. Also, she thinks it is important to embrace media outlets to build credibility and a strong public image.
Adding to that Liz shares another piece of advice. “I believe you must be strategic to be a successful financial leader. Not only do you need a strategy in place for your firm today, but you must always be thinking where your firm will be in 5 years and what business moves you will need to make to support your clients in order to stay ahead of an evolving industry.”
“When I started the firm, it was just myself and an assistant. I wasn’t a leader; I was a single contributor to a business,”
