All-female team managing $500 million drops Morgan Stanley for Sanctuary Wealth

Bowersock Capital Partners, a six-woman adviser team managing $500 million in client assets, is leaving Morgan Stanley to join Sanctuary Wealth’s independent adviser platform. 

The advisory firm is the first Morgan Stanley team Sanctuary has picked up this year and the third breakaway adviser to join the independent platform since June. Sanctuary has brought on approximately $1.1 billion in assets from former wirehouse advisers this year alone, according to company announcements. 

The former Morgan Stanley team, which sets up shop in Lawrence, Kansas, is led by founding partners Emily Bowersock Hill and Kaylin Dillon, who together have spent more than two decades at the wirehouse, according to BrokerCheck records. The firm also includes director of operations Amy Clark, client operations specialist Kristine Flynn, research analyst Catherine Prestoy and senior registered operations specialist Kathy Olds. 

Women-led adviser teams are a trend reshaping the industry, Sanctuary CEO and Founder Jim Dickson said in a statement.

In fact, being an all-female adviser team turned out to be one of the firm's greatest assets, Hill said in an interview. "If you could send me a qualified man, I’d hire him,” she said. "We didn't set out by design to be all women, it turned out that way and it’s a huge advantage in this business. The chemistry on our team is amazing."

The combination of an all-women team blends well with the members' academic backgrounds, Hill said, noting she holds a Ph.D. in History and Political Science from Yale University, where she worked for several years as a research associate.

Founding partner Kaylin Dillon was also trained in non-financial academic disciplines, Hill said. She holds M.A. and B.A. degrees in East Asian Studies as well as a B.A. in French Language and Literature from the University of Kansas and says working in the financial world is just like learning another language.

With the transition, Bowersock Capital Partners is looking to present clients with a wider array of investment choices, both public and private, now that the firm is a part of the Sanctuary platform, Dillon said in a statement.

Ramping up technology adoption is also top of mind for the firm. “As a smaller firm, backed by a partner with extensive resources, we are able to be nimbler and adopt new tools and technology that will benefit our clients as they become available,” Dillon said. 

Currently, the Indianapolis-based Sanctuary Wealth network includes more than 36 partner firms across 14 states with approximately $3.7 billion in managed assets listed on its most recent Form ADV.