MFO creates senior management role for overall client-service experience. Threshold Group has hired former Wachovia executive Elizabeth Brazas as its chief client-service officer. In this role, a new position at the multifamily office, she'll be in charge of Threshold's eight senior and associate relationship managers and six family-office service specialists.

"Elizabeth will have complete responsibility for the overall client-service experience at Threshold, end-to-end," says Threshold's president Ed Lazar. "This includes managing our team of client-relationship managers and others responsible for delivering client service and overseeing the processes and the tools necessary to proactively deliver comprehensive, 'best-of-class' service."

New opportunities

In part, Brazas will be taking over from Bob DeWeese, former head of Family Office Services, who has left the firm "to pursue new opportunities," says Lazar.

The new role was carved out, Lazar adds, because Threshold's rapid growth necessitates putting all aspects of client service under a single senior manager. Threshold, which started out as the family office of former Russell Investments head George Russell, advises on $2 billion in assets for 13 families across about 50 households.

At Threshold, "family-office services" are functions that fall outside the investment-advisory arena including wealth education, estate and tax planning, family governance, account administration, bill pay and philanthropic advice.

Brazas, who was head of Wachovia's wealth-management business in southwest Virginia, will be moving across the U.S. to work in Threshold's Gig Harbor, Wash., headquarters. She starts next month. -FWR

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