Samir “Sam” Murty, CFA
Principal, Senior Relationship Manager
Orgel Wealth Management LLC, with offices in Altoona, WI and Minnetonka, MN

Samir “Sam” Murty’s lifelong passion for music shines through whenever he performs in the Eau Claire Male Chorus or attends plays, symphony performances, operas or rock concerts in the city he calls home.  But it’s Murty’s pairing of that love of the arts with his expertise in fundraising and wealth management that is transforming Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Since 2013, Murty has served as one of the lead fundraisers for the community’s 1,200-seat performing arts center that provides rehearsal, teaching and performance space for both the community and music and theater students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. The concert hall opened its doors in the fall of 2018, and Murty continues serving on its board and will soon begin his term as president.

“I was one of the first people to donate — sight unseen,” Murty said. “I just believed in the performing arts center’s transformative powers and what it could be for this community.”

Murty grew up in western Wisconsin, raised by a mother who was a physician and a father who worked as a chemical engineer for Pillsbury and General Mills. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999, Murty took a job as a consulting associate with Jeffrey Slocum and Associates, which encouraged him to seek and earn the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®) designation.

In 2004, Murty met Mark Orgel through his work with the Bethel University Foundation investment committee. Orgel was looking for a junior consultant to join the Mark Orgel Investment Group, which then was a brokerage practice under RBC Dain Rauscher with about $1.1 billion in assets under management. Murty shared Orgel’s vision of serving clients with integrity and excellence and ultimately joined Orgel’s practice.

Orgel, Murty, and several other partners went on to form Orgel Wealth Management in 2013 as a Registered Investment Advisor serving primarily high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, business owners, retirement plans, and non-profit organizations. Orgel Wealth Management has since grown to employ 61 people managing some $5.6 billion in assets as of December 31, 2020, and recently expanded by adding an office in Minnetonka, Minnesota. But Murty is most proud of the firm’s long-term relationships with so many clients.

“We don’t measure our success by our asset base,” he said. “We measure our success by the number of people we help and by the lives that we have changed.”

Murty serves as a principal and senior relationship manager at the firm while leading its foundation and endowment practice. He remains passionate about his community and getting involved, and he often works with non-profit organizations to teach them about fundraising.

Orgel Wealth Management, which recently opened a Minnetonka office to help it meet client demand, is patient when growing its workforce to ensure it hires the right people who embrace the firm’s client centric focus, Murty says. Its partners seek out people who inherently want to do the right thing, go the extra mile, ask those extra questions, and take the more difficult path if that’s the one that needs to be taken. Its relationship managers don’t allow calls to go to voice mail during business hours, and when a call or email needs to be returned, it’s returned that same day. Senior managers make sure they’re available for their clients on nights and weekends for urgent needs.

“If you lead with the right intentions and with excellent service, good things are going to happen,” he says.

The firm has also worked to expand its team and deepen its service offerings. Currently, clients have access to estate planning specialists who can help them understand the estate planning process and partner with clients’ attorneys to develop estate plans and tax mitigation strategies. In addition, the firm has added tax professionals who can assist with forward tax planning, identify tax-efficient ways to structure business deals, and analyze and develop complex tax-management strategies in concert with clients’ outside tax counsel. All of these services and professionals, with specialists located in both the Altoona and Minnetonka offices, are available to clients at no charge beyond the firm’s advisory fee.

“Our firm strives to provide truly comprehensive service,” he said. “In addition to our tenured investment professionals, we have legal experts, tax experts, and financial planners. Our goal is to be the first place that our clients call for any manner of question — financial sure, but also for anything in their lives. We consider ourselves problem solvers first.”

Orgel Wealth Management is 100-percent employee owned with no private equity investment, and the firm’s goal is to remain independent. Its growth is primarily through word-of-mouth referrals from clients, with zero dollars budgeted for advertising.

“We’ve had many, many opportunities to sell, but we want to remain independent,” Murty said, “because we think it’s that independent, entrepreneurial spirit that allows us to make the investments to continue to put our clients first, which in turn encourages their willingness to tell a friend.”

Orgel Wealth Management has seven CFA Charterholders, including Murty, and additional employees working toward the CFA designation. Murty feels it’s important to support those efforts much like Jeffrey Slocum and Associates did in the early days of his career.

“I really do feel that it is our duty as members to continue to promote the designation as the highest standard and highest designation in the industry,” he said.

Samir Murty, CFA, holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with Honors.

Deb Weiss, CFA
Okabena Advisors, Managing Director

It’s no surprise that Deb Weiss, CFA, so skillfully helps her clients navigate the world of monitoring and tailoring investment plans. After all, she sits in the navigator’s seat of a single-engine plane built from scratch by her husband with some assistance from her.

Deb, the managing director of Okabena Advisors in Minneapolis, learned to rivet as the couple spent five years building a Van’s RV-7 two-seater and another three years constructing an RV-9.

“It came as a ‘kit,’ which means the entire outside skin of the plane only, absent wiring, instrumentation, propeller and engine,” Deb says. “All of that was custom designed or purchased separately. There is a whole community of lovely people around the world who’ve built planes and share this interest.”

Deb loves her husband’s hobby and where it (and he) can take her, but she gets just as excited by the opportunities to support the missions of her tax-exempt clients and the generosity of her taxable clients who strive to make the world a better place. Her role has her serving as her clients’ primary investment contact, communicating Okabena Investment Services’ strategy while helping them create investment policies and allocations that will meet their risk appetites and return expectations. She loves the total portfolio management aspects, risk management and asset allocation functions of her work and enjoys the variety of people and strategies across different asset classes. She’s also always on the lookout for other, like-minded potential clients whose interests are aligned.

Deb began her career in the controllers organization of the automotive industry before transitioning to corporate treasury, issuing bonds and commercial paper. She expanded into corporate venture investing before taking on responsibilities for manager research across all the broad asset classes, evaluating and selecting investments and managers for corporate pension plans and other employee benefit plans.

Deb took and passed the first two levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®) exam in the mid 1990s before assuming corporate treasurer roles that left her little time for further study. When she decided to pursue completion of her certification, she called and learned that the seven-year limit between exam levels had been lifted. She passed Level III on her second try and is thankful she was persistent and focused to achieve the designation.

“You have to be an optimist to stay in this industry,” she says, “believing that over the long run, markets grow and diversified portfolios can produce positive returns.” The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has provided both some challenges and benefits. Working from home has eliminated her commuting time, and Deb loves interacting with her clients. “I miss seeing my colleagues and clients in person, but generally people are more available and flexible about meeting,” Deb says. “And technology has made the transition considerably easier.”

In her words:

What do you want people who work with you professionally to know about you?

I hold myself to very high standards and hope always to meet and exceed clients’ and colleagues’ expectations.

How do you engage with your community?

I volunteer my time on several not-for-profit community-based boards and investment committees.

How do you spend your free time?

These days, I love hanging out with my “pod”, enjoying my family, my home, my neighborhood and the beauty of the Mississippi River and nature generally in Minnesota. When it’s too cold or dark to go out, I knit. I can’t wait to be able to take to the skies again with a destination and far-flung family and friends in mind.

Any predictions for the year ahead?

Who would have thought 2020 would look as it did? I’m not about to attempt to predict 2021. I’ll predict rates and dates, but not both!

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Deb holds a B.A. in multidisciplinary social sciences from Michigan State University (Summa cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and an MBA from the Owen School at Vanderbilt University. She and her husband have two adult sons (both happily married and gainfully employed) and two amazing grandchildren (so far).