In this engaging discussion, Sophia Ruffolo, General Counsel and Head of Compliance for the Zell Family Office, shares her extensive expertise in fiduciary roles. She explores the evolving responsibilities of fiduciaries in today’s complex family dynamics. Sophia emphasizes the importance of human-centric values like empathy and loyalty while offering actionable advice for maintaining transparency and managing conflicts. Her insights encourage families to choose flexible trustees and focus on education, ensuring their wealth is effectively stewarded across generations.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Roots Shaped Career Path
Sophia traces her legal career to childhood memories of sitting on her grandfather's lap and watching him read law books.
She describes a non-linear path through private practice and banking that led back to serving a family office as general counsel.
insights INSIGHT
Fiduciary Work Is Human-Centered
Being a fiduciary is fundamentally human, rooted in loyalty, prudence, confidentiality, and good faith.
Effective fiduciary work balances principled judgment with practical implementable actions for families.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Pair Process With Empathy
Use documented frameworks for decisions but combine them with empathy and intuition when evaluating family requests.
Explain required information to family members to reduce friction and increase transparency.
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Today, I am delighted to welcome Sophia Ruffolo, General Counsel and Head of Compliance for the Zell Family Office, a division of Chai Trust Company, LLC. With over 20 years of experience in Estate and Tax Planning, Investment Management and Fiduciary Oversight, Sophia is a seasoned leader in law, fiduciary risk management, compliance, and governance. Sophia is a member of the Board of Directors and Audit Committee of Metropolitan Family Services and co-founder of femmebought, a social enterprise dedicated to supporting women-owned businesses and promoting gender equity in the global marketplace. Sophia and the Chai Trust Company are long-time valued members of FOX and are very generous and insightful contributors to the FOX community.
In the family wealth and family office space, most of the advisors and family office professionals serving multigenerational families are acting in a fiduciary role on behalf of their clients. Sophia talks about what it means to be a fiduciary and how this concept and its practice have evolved over the recent decades and years, as families and the world around them have evolved.
One challenge fiduciaries and their clients face is an ever-changing external environment and an ever-evolving and more complex families and family enterprises. Sophia shares her thoughts on how fiduciaries can keep things evergreen in the face of all this change and disruption – how they should think about the design of their role and how they perform their duties day to day in service of the family.
Sophia offers some practical suggestions and tips for advisors, and especially those in a fiduciary role, to ensure they are fulfilling that role in the best possible way for the families they serve. She then tuns her focus on the clients themselves and provides useful advice for family principals on how they can best engage with their fiduciary advisors to ensure the family goals are achieved and the family and its members are happy and flourishing in the long run.
Don't miss this deeply insightful conversation with a uniquely experienced expert and family office professional serving one of the most prominent and sophisticated enterprise families in the US.
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