Jam and Honey: Buh Bye Big Apple. Manchester Capital’s Susan Sofronas has Arrived

Newish Montecitan Susan Sofronas – recently arrived from the isle of Manhattan – is settling in nicely. She already adores our little woodland getaway, and as we sip java at sun-soaked Bree’osh on Coast Village, she charmingly parses her personal Tale of Two Cities with open delight. 

“If you think of New York City – which is where I spent all of my career until coming here – you’re not entering two-story buildings. You’re walking into buildings that are 30, 50, a hundred stories high. You’ve got security. You have to show your ID. You need a pass just to walk to the elevator! So clients in that setting aren’t going to just show up and say, ‘Hi, Susan! How are you?’ But here,” she says with mild wonder, her voice lowering, “Our clients bring their dogs. They stop by to drop off their jams and their honeys. They come by because they just want to say hello.” The comparatively unbuttoned Montecito vibe comports nicely with Sofronas’ work, which may be best described as a finely calibrated admixture of genuine empathy and deep, experiential
market wisdom. 

Sofronas comes to us as the newly-minted Managing Director and Head of West Coast Activities for Manchester Capital Management. And what do they do? A more approachable query might be, “What don’t they do?” We’ll get to all that, but first we have to embarrass the subject of this essay. 

Sofronas was named one of the Top 100 Women Financial Advisors in America by the Financial Times, and one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Private Wealth by the publication Private Asset Management (PAM). Her nuanced expertise on wealth management for women has made her an incandescent thought leader in that space. Susan Sofronas is a highly respected figure in the rarefied family office/wealth management universe and brings all her necessary gifts to bear on the work she loves. Neither has she dawdled. Her blue-chip CV neatly portrays Sofronas’ steady ascent as the contrail of a bespoke rocket, climbing without fuss into the upper stratosphere of her expertise. And now the village. 

Manchester Capital Management

Family. Office. Combining these two unspectacular nouns produces very little heat. But in financial argot a family office is in fact something of a miracle, an investment of time and emotion in the interest of someone else’s legacy. The term ‘family office’ describes a private wealth management advisory firm that offers services to ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWI). Manchester Capital (MCM) is a multi-family office, offering overarching financial services to, yes, multiple families. Independently owned, founded in 1992 by a certain Ted Cronin (a gentleman of some local renown), MCM has been serving wealthy families for more than three decades. It may or may not completely surprise her fan base to learn that our beloved Village Poet and Sculptor, Susan Read Cronin, is allied with the firm. Significantly, Manchester’s relationship with the client family is, if not the object, certainly the subject of the arrangement. 

“Our clients are truly an extension of our family,” Sofronas says. “And I can say that is our secret sauce, our superpower, what differentiates us from many of the other people who say they’re a multifamily office. Our clients really are extensions of our family. I’ve seen it real time. I’ve been able to play tennis with clients, go on hikes with clients. And the fact that we get to be based here in Montecito, to be able to provide that service to our families and to have that connection. I feel honored that I have the opportunity to be of service to Manchester and our families. This a really special and unique place.” 

To be clear, Manchester is not there to upsell you on arcane fiduciary gew-gaws. “We have no products. There’s no vested or financial gain if we point you in this direction for a particular investment strategy or that direction. We are a true fiduciary. And so our goal is to determine what your goals are, and to make sure that we find the right investments with the right risk return profile to help you meet your goals.” 

And the variety of families and perspectives who seek these services make the work a heartening fractal of life itself (if I may say so). 

“This work comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility,” Susan says. “Our goal is to make sure that your wealth lives – should you wish it to live – beyond just your time, that you leave a legacy. And so we work to help to make sure that you are a steward of this capital for your lifetime, and that capital then moves on to the next generation. But again, it’s all predicated on what they want. And sometimes they don’t know what they want.” 

Family Affair

To those of us who perhaps naively imagine that wealthy families are possessed of some inherent magical money wisdom, Sofronas sets the record straight. The families that come to Manchester for long-term, and often complex, guidance often have very quotidian questions. 

“We help them come to the answer themselves,” Sofronas says. “One of the biggest questions is, ‘How much do I leave to my children?’” She smiles disarmingly and shrugs in the manner of an encouraging teacher. One can easily imagine the bond of borderless personal trust and colorful conversation that must define her relationship with the client family. Sofronas sees her role as helping the family to articulate what it is they truly want. 

Gently guiding a family through these sometimes revelatory conversations allows arrival at an authentic understanding of the long term landscape, and the various avenues that lend themselves to secure financial stewardship. And you get to work closely with some of the most interesting and filigreed families on Earth.

Susan’s origin story? A onetime accounting major (there, I said it), Sofronas saw the light, changed her major to finance and investments, and sallied forth to conquer the known realm. It’s gone pretty well. It helps that she thrives on the measured interpersonal component of her work. To put it as blandly as possible. Do we stumble into our professional happiness, or do some of us just hear Que Sera Sera, grab the steering wheel in a panic, and end up on the improbably named Coast Village Road? At the next table there is a small dog, probably worth a fortune, that could be a shag carpet remnant with eyes. It takes a long noisy drink from its collapsible doggy bowl and comes up slopping water and smiling, its fool tongue dangling. Summer in the village. 

“I just went straight to Wall Street after college,” Sofronas says with an air of mild surprise. “I worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange one summer, and it was really – I couldn’t have planned it any better. And you ask about comparing the pace between New York and Montecito? I love this pace. I think my whole career was leading up to this.” Susan Sofronas, Manchester Capital’s New Head of West Coast Activities, settles back in her chair. “But if I hadn’t changed my major, who knows where I’d be? I would’ve been a very unhappy accountant. I’m a people person,” she says with a sudden grin. “Right?”