Once Stephanie Bucko was exposed to the intricate world of hedge funds, she was hooked. But when she started managing money for people, she knew she had found her calling.
The CIO and co-founder of Los Angeles-based Mana Financial Life Design started her career in accounting, working for PwC auditing hedge funds. After getting her CPA, she joined a fund of hedge funds company and started gaining deeper knowledge around compliance and cash flow management.
"It was a fund that invested in hundreds of different hedge funds,” Bucko said. “It was like if you put 40 hedge funds into one portfolio, what could happen? How does this portfolio manager manage this massive beast? It was super challenging.”
The work was captivating to Bucko, but she was managing money for institutions, reporting to a board of directors. About 10 years ago, she started managing money for people and really fell in love with the business.
“Actually getting to work one-on-one with people just really hit home for me," she said.
She acted upon this lightbulb moment. Partnering with her best friend from college, Cristina Livadary, who was also in asset management, they observed a gap in the market; Millennials like them were underserved. They launched Mana Financial Life Design, aiming to serve people in a way that was both personal and profound.
“We call it financial life design because we really are about helping people live a life that they're super excited to live today and not just in the future,” Bucko explains.
From an investment standpoint, the duo married this with a focus on impact investing, in which it’s not only about financial returns but also about generating positive, measurable social and environmental impact.
"There's a lot more coming out in both the impact space and the alternative investment space for liquid investments,” Bucko said. “For me, it’s just an area that we're all passionate about as a firm. The industry has evolved so much and it's rapidly changing, so just being at the forefront of that and being able to provide that to our clients [is important]. Our clients definitely want to do good with their investing, in addition to growing their investments.” To build their client base, Bucko and Livadary “emailed everyone we knew.” It meant a lot of their friends became clients. They wanted to choose the right prospects who were going to be in it for the long run.
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