Family Offices (Single & Multi-Family Office)

We work across the full spectrum of family office structures. Single-family offices serving one principal or family, from lean two-person operations to fully institutionalized offices with dedicated investment, legal, tax, and operational teams. Multi-family offices managing wealth and operations across multiple families, where the complexity multiplies and the need for operational talent with institutional experience is particularly acute.

We also work directly with UHNW principals who do not have a formal family office structure but operate at a level of complexity that requires the same quality of support: managing advisors, legal counsel, household staff, travel, and personal logistics alongside active business interests.

The common thread is that the principal's world is complex, the trust required is high, and the consequences of a bad hire are significant, not just professionally but personally.

Every family office is different. That is not a platitude; it is a structural reality that makes hiring in this space genuinely challenging. Two single-family offices with similar asset levels can have completely different cultures, operational structures, and expectations for their staff. The principal's personality, the family dynamics, the geographic footprint, the investment strategy, and the level of involvement in day-to-day operations all shape what the right hire looks like.

A Chief of Staff at a family office is not doing the same job as a Chief of Staff at a hedge fund. They may be managing investment operations in the morning, coordinating with household staff at lunch, and preparing for a philanthropic board meeting in the afternoon. The scope is broader, the context shifts are more dramatic, and the relationship with the principal is more personal.

An EA in a family office context is often the most trusted person in the principal's orbit, managing information that is extraordinarily sensitive and making judgment calls that affect both the business and the family. The qualities required go well beyond professional competence. Character, emotional intelligence, and loyalty matter in ways that are hard to assess through conventional interview processes.

This is why generalist search firms consistently struggle with family office mandates. The context is too specific, the requirements too nuanced, and the relationship between principal and staff too personal for a standard recruitment approach to deliver consistently.

Executive Assistants and Personal Assistants to principals and family members, managing the full spectrum of professional and personal demands. Chiefs of Staff who coordinate across the investment office, the household, external advisors, and family interests. COOs who build and manage the operational infrastructure of the office: investment operations, compliance, technology, reporting, and vendor management.

We also place Family Office Managers, Estate Managers, and senior support professionals who own specific dimensions of the principal's world: travel coordination, property management, staff oversight, and project management across complex, multi-property, multi-jurisdiction households.

In multi-family office contexts, we place operational leaders who manage complexity across multiple client families, requiring the ability to maintain different relationships, different expectations, and different communication styles simultaneously.

Family office searches are among the most sensitive we conduct. The principal's world is private by design, and the information we receive during the briefing process is treated with absolute confidentiality.

Every engagement begins with a genuine understanding of the principal and their environment: how they live, how they work, what their family structure looks like, what their investment interests are, what has worked and what has not in previous hires, and what the role truly needs to accomplish. In family office contexts, the job title tells us very little. The diagnostic is everything.

We draw on a network built over more than a decade placing operational and support talent in family offices, private households, and HNW environments across the US and UK. The best candidates in this space are rarely available through conventional channels. They are deeply embedded in roles where they are trusted and valued, and reaching them requires relationships and discretion.

Every candidate is evaluated through Blackbook Assess, with scenarios adapted for the multi-context demands of family office work: managing competing priorities across professional and personal spheres, navigating family dynamics with sensitivity, and maintaining discretion under pressure.

Our family office mandates span the US and UK, with particular concentration in the cities where family office principals are based: New York, Miami, Palm Beach, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, London, and Geneva. We also place internationally for principals with homes, offices, or interests across multiple jurisdictions.