Grace Mellis joins as Chief Financial Officer and Adam Grealish as Head of Investments, building on strong company growth and significant adoption of its modern RIA platform
Altruist, the all-in-one custodial solution for modern financial advisors, announced two powerhouse leadership team hires. Grace Mellis, a former JPMorgan Chase managing director, joins as the company’s first-ever Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Adam Grealish, Betterment’s former Director of Investing, joins as Altruist’s Head of Investments. Mellis’ and Grealish’s hires fuel Altruist’s mission to make personalized, independent financial advice better, more affordable, and accessible.
“One thing remains constant in financial services: people want professional financial advice from a real person who cares about their future,” said Jason Wenk, co-founder and CEO, Altruist. “Both large advisory firms and fintech companies have lost sight of this simple fact. Some priced independent financial advice completely out of reach, and others took human advisors out of the equation entirely. Having Grace and Adam on board—one from the world of traditional custodians and the other robo-advisors—underscores the growing industry-wide need for accessible, high-quality, human-centered advisory options.”
Mellis brings over 20 years of invaluable finance, strategy, and management expertise to Altruist. She spent nearly a decade as a managing director and head of international strategy at JPMorgan Chase within the Corporate and Investment Bank. Mellis played an integral role in scaling Hyrecar through to its IPO and addition to the Russell 3000 index and currently serves at Techstars as a mentor and investor. As Altruist’s CFO, Mellis will drive important initiatives to thoughtfully scale the company—guided by trust, transparency, and teamwork.
“Altruist has a significant, rare opportunity in a well-established industry—if we do well as a company, we’ll do good in the world,” said Grace Mellis, CFO, Altruist. “Like many successful companies, Altruist identified a clear yet widely ignored problem, then built sophisticated technology to address that need. Removing barriers for independent financial advisors and making it easy to deliver a modern experience for their clients: Altruist is setting a new standard.”
Grealish’s career is rooted in financial innovation, which will be immensely valuable in his role at Altruist. He most recently led Betterment’s strategic asset allocation, fund selection, automated portfolio management, and tax strategies. Grealish co-founded algorithmic job-search platform Roletroll and served as a vice president at Goldman Sachs, overseeing the structured corporate credit and macro credit trading strategies.
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These hires continue a momentous year for Altruist. The company launched its platform in late 2020, growing to serve nearly 1,000 registered investment advisors (RIAs) since—a significant feat given the market size and state. Altruist also launched its Model Marketplace with Vanguard and Dimensional Fund Advisors, recently expanding the offering with additional world-class asset managers. The company has made swift, intentional growth, garnering $50MM in funding and more than doubling its team this year.
