Office address: 10635 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite 240, Los Angeles, CA 90025
Website: evokeadvisors.com
Year established: 2019
Company type: financial services
Employees: 90+
Expertise: investment management, wealth management, financial planning, tax planning, tax preparation, family office services, estate planning, institutional consulting, alternative investments, portfolio design and management
Parent company: MAI Capital Management LLC
Key people: David Hou, Jane Eagle, and Jay Sanders (managing partners); Damien Bisserier and Alex Shahidi (co-CIOs), Brian Waters (deputy general counsel), Mark Sear (investment advisor)
Financing status: corporate-backed or acquired
Evoke Advisors is the public brand of Evoke Wealth, LLC, a registered investment advisor (RIA) now owned by MAI. It works with families, founders, and institutions on investing, planning, tax matters, and family office needs. The business is based in Los Angeles and has a Newport Beach office.
The company began in LA in 2019 as Evoke Wealth, LLC (dba Evoke Advisors). Co-founders David Hou and Alex Shahidi started the firm after leaving First Republic, a US private bank and wealth management company. They launched the business to offer more tailored advice through an independent firm structure.
From the start, Evoke focused on clients with complex planning and investment needs. The firm built its work around customized portfolios, broader planning, and family office support. By mid-2025, MAI said Evoke managed about $27 billion across discretionary and non-discretionary assets.
Its California presence includes a main office in LA and another office in Newport Beach. In 2024, InvestmentNews named Alex Shahidi to its Top Financial Advisors in the USA list. The publication based the ranking on AUM, AUM growth, and client growth between September 2022 and September 2023. In 2025, Evoke Advisors received two other awards:
Top Independent High-Net-Worth Advisors 2025
5-Star Wealth Management Teams
See the full collection of awards and Special Reports on our Best in Wealth page.
The next major step came in 2025, when MAI Capital Management announced a strategic partnership with Evoke Advisors. That deal closed on October 31, 2025, and brought the company into the wider business. As of January 1, 2026, MAI said total combined assets reached over $72 billion, with Evoke contributing $16 billion in AUM.
Evoke Advisors offers a broad advisory set that brings investments, planning, tax work, and family office support together:
Evoke Advisors also says it works with feeder vehicles, ETF-related strategies, and GP-stakes investing as part of its investment activity.
Evoke describes its culture as client-focused and built around tailored advice. It also says its work is shaped by:
Evoke Advisors showed both recruiting activity and local community involvement in 2025. Evoke promoted its summer internship program that year. It also said it held an annual blood drive with Cedars-Sinai in LA.
David Hou serves as managing partner at Evoke Advisors and brings 33 years in the wealth management space. Before joining Evoke, Hou was a senior managing director at First Republic and co-founded Luminous Capital before First Republic acquired the RIA.
Hou also spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. He holds a BA in business/economics and an MBA from UCLA.
Other senior leaders at Evoke Advisors include:
This leadership team supports Evoke's day-to-day business and client work. As part of MAI, Evoke operates within a broader national platform while keeping its own leadership structure in place.
When MAI finalized the acquisition in late 2025, Evoke moved into a larger national advisory platform. Evoke Advisors' role in the deal was to bring MAI an LA-based team, new managing partners, and deeper ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) reach. This also gave the company a much larger operating base, which will allow it to broaden client support and tap into MAI's wider planning resources.
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MOEs can turn into a "very morbid discussion for a leadership team," says Merit's M&A executive David Wahlen, highlighting the tough choices RIAs face as they chase the scale of mega-firms.
Also, The Mather Group adds a $300M West Coast RIA, while Arkadios Capital supports a $700M Commonwealth team's break from LPL.
Elsewhere, &Partners adds another Wells Fargo team in Texas, while MAI finalizes its acquisition of Evoke Advisors in LA.
RIA's latest acquisition boosts Southeast expansion and advisor capabilities.
Co-founder Pat Collins tells InvestmentNews of his 'strong feeling' that a employee-owned approach will lead to better outcomes.
Kathreen Alcorn joins the Cleveland-based RIA's C-suite with over two decades of experience, including senior leadership at Nasdaq.
Also, MAI Capital and Carson Group have expanded their footprints in Florida, Ohio, and Illinois with new RIA partners
The two serial acquirers added new partners on separate sides of the map, including a $570 million Bay Area RIA and a $600 million planning-focused firm in Pennsylvania.
"We've seen two so far, and it feels like something that the industry has been talking about for years," Turkey Hill Management's Jessica Polito says following the recent Cresset-Monticello and MAI-Evoke Advisors mergers, which could be a sign of future consolidation among large RIAs.
