Carina Diamond, an award-winning financial advisor with more than 25 years of experience building and growing wealth management teams, today announced the launch of her new firm, Stella Secunda, which will provide consultative strategies to help financial services firms navigate change and embrace next-generation business opportunities.
Latin for “Next Star,” Stella Secunda helps financial firms develop nascent talent to support succession planning while also guiding owners through transitions in the natural lifecycle of their businesses. The company serves a wide array of financial services clients, including fintech and insurance companies, advisory firms, broker-dealers, banks, and accounting firms with wealth management divisions.
“In the midst of the greatest transfer of wealth in history, firms must get serious about succession planning, or they risk jeopardizing everything they worked so hard to build,” Diamond said. “With the launch of Stella Secunda, my goal is to not only help firms attract, grow and retain top talent but to maximize business opportunities so they can achieve sustained longevity.”
At Stella Secunda, Diamond will provide a variety of services, including succession planning, next-generation talent development, and the creation of organic strategies. Additionally, she will help firms successfully implement diversity initiatives to enhance their growth cycle.
Diamond was most recently Chief Growth Officer at Dakota Wealth Management, an independent wealth management firm with $3.2 billion in assets under management. In this role, she led organic growth strategy, employee engagement, and corporate events while partnering with investment bankers on M&A and capital raise initiatives. She joined Dakota in 2019 as Chief Experience Officer after she sold her $270 million registered investment advisory (RIA) firm, Springside Partners, to the company. She had previously sold SS&G Wealth Management, a brokerage based practice, when she converted to a fee-only model.
Adding to Diamond’s well-rounded advisory acumen, she was the founder of Flourish – Women and Wealth which provided regular presentations and workshops for 14 years to thousands of women, teaching them how to become empowered and engaged in their financial lives. Earlier in her career, Diamond served as Senior Vice President, Trust and Investment Services for Metropolitan Bank & Trust, where she took over and turned around a startup trust company that was pending shutdown by Ohio regulators.
“Having built, transitioned and sold two successful businesses myself, I am excited for an opportunity to share what I’ve learned with other firms that want to take their businesses to the next level,” Diamond said. “With so much competition in the financial services industry, we need to normalize succession planning and recognize that it’s never too early to plan for the future.”
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