Cressida Collaborative advises families and family offices on complex decisions involving people, assets, and generational planning.
We build and manage family office ecosystems — hiring and onboarding exceptional teams, overseeing major acquisitions, and implementing process changes in partnership with trusted providers. The goal is to shape private infrastructure around how a family actually lives — not how others expect it to look. For each family, we bring in the right partners, drawing on best practices refined across some of the most complex family offices globally. We offer judgment, discretion, and a fiduciary mindset to every situation a client might face.
We move quietly, intelligently, and always in alignment with your family's values.
WE WORK WITH:
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Principals and Family Members needing fractional family office management and related-HR support; who wish to maintain anonymity; enhance privacy and security; outsource execution; and professionalize their teams.
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Family Office Leaders looking for additional leverage without adding full time team members. Our current single family office clients vary from $1 billion to over $100 billion in assets.
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Chiefs of Staff helping principals scale their small teams by leveraging contractors while offering discreet, best-in-class service.
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MFO/RIA Heads seeking to augment their firm's family office services capabilities, allowing them to focus on investing.
Our Team
James founded Cressida Collaborative in 2020. He brings more than fifteen years of strategic talent advisory experience in the asset and wealth management space to some of the largest and most complex family offices in North America.
Prior to founding Cressida, James served as Head of Human Resources for BlackRock’s $1.7 trillion U.S. and Canada Institutional business. He managed the organization’s human capital processes, including recruiting, leadership development, executive coaching and education, promotion and compensation processes, and succession and talent planning. James worked extensively with the family office client team, and frequently heard from families about their needs to professionalize their offices. The idea for Cressida was born as he heard how those families needed help building distinct cultures within their family offices and portfolio companies, struggled to build best-in-class teams using the same high bar across their organizations, and aimed to generate alignment between family members and leadership teams.
James spent the first decade of his career as a recruiter at leading boutique asset management-focused executive search firms, helping investment firms and asset allocators hire investors, business leaders, and sales professionals. He graduated from Regis University in Denver, Colorado.
When James isn’t helping clients, he can most likely be found searching for great coffee, spending time with his nieces and nephew, restoring cars, or skiing.