2025 FPA NorCal Conference

Rich Arzaga is a dedicated advocate for investors who own directly held real estate investments, an asset class often overlooked by financial advisors. With a focus on comprehensive financial planning, Rich also provides valuable guidance on various real estate matters, including real estate cash flow modeling, buy-sell-hold decisions, 1031 exchanges, tax-advantaged strategies, inherited properties, and other challenges investors may face.

As the Founder and CEO of The Real Estate Whisperer Financial Planning, an advice-only firm, Rich brings a wealth of expertise. He is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, a Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM), and a Registered Investment Advisor. Finding a dually credentialed professional like Rich, with both CFP® and CCIM designations, is exceptionally rare in the financial planning landscape. His clientele includes real estate investors of varying experience levels, business owners, and affluent families.

Rich’s reputation extends beyond his role as a financial advisor. He is an honored instructor and adjunct professor in the UC Berkeley Personal Financial Planning program and the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Extension. Additionally, he has been featured twice at the esteemed Commonwealth Club of San Francisco and has earned a place among Worth Magazine’s Top 250 Wealth Advisors in the Nation. Rich’s real estate strategies have been showcased in prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Investor’s Business Daily, The Journal of Financial Planning, The Journal of Accountancy, Real Estate Business, REALTOR® Magazine Kiplinger Retirement Newsletter, and other business and finance magazines.

As a Principal and Chief Wealth Officer at Aspyre Wealth Partners in Overland Park KS, Jessi Chadd, CFP® CeFT® is given a lot of opportunities to do what she genuinely loves…help people. She enjoys being the person that you can call upon for an ear to listen or for a plan to effectively maneuver through your situation, including an empty nest, retirement, or the loss of a spouse. To make life count, Jessi loves to bake and entertain family and friends. She and her husband enjoy fostering a healthy lifestyle, watching movies together, and traveling as much as possible. Ask her about her golden retriever, Walter, and orange tabby cat, Todd — but only if you want to see pictures.

Derek Craig (New York) joined KKR in 2022 and is a member of the Global Client Solutions. Derek Craig is involved in the firm’s global capital raising activities as a product specialist focused on Infrastructure. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Craig was a vice president at Brookfield Asset Management, where he participated in capital raising efforts on the wealth solutions team. Previously, Derek was a director at UBS responsible for investor relations across their discretionary platform. Mr. Craig received a B.S. in Business Management an a B.A. in Psychology from Bucknell University and is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA).

Sara Dorosti earned her BA at UC Berkeley and her JD at Berkeley Law. She practiced as an estate planning attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman before joining Merrill Lynch as a Wealth Strategist. Her expertise is in the areas of estate, tax, and business succession planning. Sara is also currently an adjunct professor at Berkeley Law, where she teaches Trust & Wills. She is fluent in German, Farsi and Danish.

Beth’s journey from medical systems to financial advising reflects her unwavering commitment to helping others navigate the complexities of Medicare. Having blazed trails in field sales and management within California’s early Medicare plans, she understands firsthand the challenges of healthcare insurance.

Beth spent 8 years at PacifiCare Health Systems in field sales and sales management for Secure Horizons, one of California’s first Medicare Advantage plans. She was part of the team responsible for starting up Secure Horizons in all Bay Area counties as well as the Central Valley and Sacramento area.

She then pivoted to become a licensed financial advisor at Smith Barney until she retired from corporate life to be a full-time mom and active community volunteer.

Realizing the incredible need to help people figure out the current Medicare maze, Beth returned to her roots to launch Gebhardt Group Medicare Solutions. She focuses on educating people who are approaching 65 on all things Medicare: how it works, how much it costs, understanding enrollment periods and when they can sign up, etc.

Beth’s goal is to cut through the noise, help clients understand their choices, and make the best decision for their specific situation.

Originally from San Diego, Beth moved to Northern California to attend UC Berkeley where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Rhetoric.

Louis Helmonds has built a distinguished entrepreneurial career spanning over 25 years, marked by three successful exits from technology-based service companies. He brings extensive expertise in the lending industry, having developed innovative solutions for top-tier banks that cater to high-income, complex financial clients.
As the CEO and founder of New Venture Visions (NVV), Louis leveraged his industry experience and CFP training to establish the first Virtual Family Office service company of its kind. NVV specializes in aligning real estate-related debt with the clients’ broader tax and financial plans. Under his leadership, the company has developed proprietary, cloud-based applications and processes that streamline collaboration, complex underwriting, and the integration of debt and tax strategies to deliver its services efficiently and accurately.
Over the years as part of NVV’s team, Louis has collaborated closely with partners and executives from national accounting and financial advisory firms delivering tailored, tax-optimized debt restructuring solutions that consistently help partnering firms meet and often exceed the client’s objectives. Louis also often participates as a trainer to various industry firms and participates as an instructor for CalCPA, CFP Board, and NASBA.

As a pioneer in the tax-aware investment industry, Quantinno Capital Management’s Founder and CIO, Hoon Kim holds a PhD in accounting and has managed equity portfolios at the world’s largest asset managers for 20+ years.

Hoon has spent his career innovating at the intersection of tax, portfolio management, and equity research. Prior to founding Quantinno in 2018, Hoon served as partner and senior executive at AQR Capital Management (“AQR”). During his tenure at AQR , Hoon served as the head of portfolio construction/implementation and senior researcher for global stock selection. He also served as Head of Quant Equity Research at Mellon Capital from May 2001 to May 2005. Hoon earned a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1998 and 2001 respectively and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Jeffrey Levine, CPA/PFS, CFP®, ChFC®, RICP®, CWS®, BFA®, MSA is the Lead Financial Planning Nerd for Kitces.com and the Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners. In 2022, Jeffrey received ThinkAdvisor’s Luminaries award for Education and Thought Leadership. Other industry recognitions include being named to Investment Advisor Magazine’s IA25 in 2021 for being one of the top 25 “VIPs Pushing Advisors Forward,” which followed being named to the same list in 2020 as one of the top 25 voices to turn to during uncertain times. Also in 2020, Jeffrey was named by Financial Advisor Magazine as a Young Advisor to Watch. He is a past recipient of the Standing Ovation award, presented by the AICPA Financial Planning Division for “exemplary professional achievement in personal financial planning services,” and is a member of the 2017 class of 40 Under 40 by InvestmentNews, which recognizes “accomplishment, contribution to the financial advice industry, leadership and promise for the future.” Previously, Jeffrey served as Ed Slott and Company’s Chief Retirement Strategist, where his ability to simplify the complex laws that govern individual retirement accounts, combined with his unique blend of humor and tax planning, was first recognized. You can follow Jeff on Twitter @CPAPlanner, where he is known to break down the latest tax updates in GIF-filled tweets storms, and via his personal website, www.FullyVestedAdvice.com.

Hannah Moore, CFP®, is transforming financial planning by reimagining education and training for the next generation — and the firms that employ them.

In addition to her role as owner and principal planner at Guiding Wealth, Hannah created Amplified Planning, a financial planner education company. During the pandemic, she also started the well-known Externship, which now boasts over 4,000 alumni. At Amplified Planning, Hannah’s subscription programs, CORE and CORE+, offer monthly access to real client meetings, experience hours, coaching calls, and other learning experiences for nearly 200 aspiring and working financial planners.

In 2021, Hannah was given the Financial Planning Association® Heart of Financial Planning Award and was named Innovator of the Year by Wealth Management (2024) and the Industry Transformer Award by Women in Wealth Management (2023). She was also just named one of 20 people who will shape wealth management in 2025 by Financial Planning.

Sheryl Rowling is Morningstar’s Editorial Director, Financial Advice. In this role, Rowling writes and speaks as a subject-matter expert on tax-efficient investing, portfolio management, and advisor practice management. She previously was the founder and principal of Rowling & Associates as well as the founder and president of Total Rebalance Expert, a tax-efficient portfolio management solution.

Rowling has over 40 years of experience in the financial services industry. She has been named one of the nation’s top 250 financial advisors by Worth magazine and was named one of Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting. In December 2016, InvestmentNews named her to its list of 20 Icons & Innovators.

Rowling holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in business administration in finance from San Diego State University. She is the author of the books Tax and Wealth Strategies for Family Businesses (CCH, 2006) and Your Financial Travel Guide To Life (Lulu, 2017). She is a retired Certified Public Accountant and Personal Financial Specialist.

Cooper Sinclair is Vice President of Strategy at Midland Advisory, a unit focused on the RIA marketplace at Midland National Life. His core position functions include establishing and growing sales and distribution opportunities and identifying and executing initiatives that build the advisory annuity business at Midland National within Sammons Financial Group. Prior to leading the strategic efforts at Midland Advisory, Sinclair led the national RIA strategy for Prudential Financial. As one of a small number of insurance executives with experience in both RIA strategy creation and successful RIA sales execution, Sinclair has broad sales and distribution experience. At Prudential, he built the company’s RIA wholesaling team and broker-of-record desk, guided the development of their RIA-specific web experience, and consulted with product manufacturing and marketing to develop variable and fixed index annuity solutions for the advisory space. Prior to Prudential, Sinclair held similar RIA leadership roles at Lincoln Financial Group and Jefferson National (now Nationwide). He began his focus on the RIA market at AEGON/Transamerica’s Advisor Resources Division, and has been in the financial services industry since 2000. Sinclair took part in the Committee of Annuity Insurers successful initiative to obtain non-taxable treatment for advisory fees extracted from non-qualified annuities, by way of IRS PLRs issued in the summer of 2019. Sinclair has an undergraduate degree from Hanover College, and holds the Series 7, 66, and 26 FINRA registrations. He resides in Louisville, KY, along with his wife Andrea, and their four sons.