Institutional judgment and execution for the parts of life that don’t appear on a balance sheet.
Cressida Collaborative is an advisory firm serving the world’s most prominent families. We help build and run family office ecosystems — from hiring and onboarding exceptional teams and service providers to overseeing real estate, aviation, and other private acquisitions. We bring institutional judgment and a fiduciary mindset to the most personal areas of our clients’ lives.
Whether stepping in as interim leadership, sourcing niche advisors, or helping structure long-term governance and succession plans, we are built to move quietly, intelligently, and in alignment with your family's values.
WE WORK WITH:
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Principals and Family Members needing fractional family office management and related-HR support; who wish to maintain anonymity; enhance privacy and security; outsource execution; and professionalize their teams.
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Family Office Leaders looking for additional leverage without adding full time team members. Our current single family office clients vary from $1 billion to over $100 billion in assets.
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Chiefs of Staff helping principals scale their small teams by leveraging contractors while offering discreet, best-in-class service.
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MFO/RIA Heads seeking to augment their firm's family office services capabilities, allowing them to focus on investing.
Our Team
James founded Cressida Collaborative in 2020. He brings more than fifteen years of strategic talent advisory experience in the asset and wealth management space to some of the largest and most complex family offices in North America.
Prior to founding Cressida, James served as Head of Human Resources for BlackRock’s $1.7 trillion U.S. and Canada Institutional business. He managed the organization’s human capital processes, including recruiting, leadership development, executive coaching and education, promotion and compensation processes, and succession and talent planning. James worked extensively with the family office client team, and frequently heard from families about their needs to professionalize their offices. The idea for Cressida was born as he heard how those families needed help building distinct cultures within their family offices and portfolio companies, struggled to build best-in-class teams using the same high bar across their organizations, and aimed to generate alignment between family members and leadership teams.
James spent the first decade of his career as a recruiter at leading boutique asset management-focused executive search firms, helping investment firms and asset allocators hire investors, business leaders, and sales professionals. He graduated from Regis University in Denver, Colorado.
When James isn’t helping clients, he can most likely be found searching for great coffee, spending time with his nieces and nephew, restoring cars, or skiing.