As an undergrad at Boston College in the 1990s, Michelle Knight set out to be a business journalist.
But mentors suggested Knight work in business first, before going to journalism school. That led to her first job as an analyst at J.P. Morgan in New York, where she fell in love with finance.
That early advice paid off, big time, for Knight, who recently became chief executive of RWA Wealth Partners. The recent promotion prompted the locally based firm to describe itself as one of the largest female-led registered investment advisers in the country.
Knight takes over for Mario Ramos, who left after shepherding the business through a 2023 merger of Ropes Wealth Advisors — a spinout from law firm Ropes & Gray led by Knight — and Adviser Investments, which was led by Ramos. RWA kept both predecessor firms’ offices: RWA’s space in the Prudential Tower, where it subleases space from Ropes & Gray, and Adviser Investments’ location in Newton. The merger received financial backing from private equity firm Summit Partners. (Summit had first invested in Adviser Investments in 2020.)
It’s a big step up for Knight, who now leads a workforce more than triple the size of what she oversaw at Ropes — with more than 180 people working for RWA, and $16.5 billion in assets under management.
The reality set in during an all-hands meeting she held at the Liberty Hotel in Boston.
“It was exhilarating to look out and see 180 professionals that I lead, and to see their excitement,” Knight said. “It just made me feel so positive about the future.”
The West Roxbury native said one of RWA’s strengths is providing clients with advice beyond just stocks and bonds by addressing everything from taxes to legal questions to philanthropy. To some extent, she said, this holistic approach reflects a distinctly Boston attitude about money management.
“To me, the best service you can give someone [is when] we weave all those things into one meeting,” Knight said. “We’re not saving lives, but hopefully we’re helping people make really great decisions with their financial lives.”
Turning the page at Curriculum Associates
Rob Waldron is starting a new chapter for Curriculum Associates.
Waldron, chief executive of the Billerica educational software firm, informed his 2,500 employees last week that he will make way for Kelly Sia, the firm’s president, to become chief executive as of Jan. 1. Waldron will remain with the firm as chairman, focusing more on talent recruitment and acquisition strategy than day-to-day operations.
The firm has come a long way since 2008, when Waldron took over as chief executive from cofounder Frank Ferguson. At the time, Curriculum Associates employed only about 100 people and mainly published print versions of instructional and assessment materials. It also only had enough cash left to run for about three months, largely because of school district budget cuts. One secret to Waldron’s success in turning the company around: focusing on edtech software. Now, schools around the country use CA’s flagship software, known as i-Ready, to help tailor the learning experience for individual kids.
With annual revenue of nearly $800 million, Waldron believes it’s time to pass on the reins to someone with a different kind of background. He hired Sia — who previously worked for Procter & Gamble and Iron Mountain — four years ago, and gradually promoted her through several C-suite roles.
“It needs a different set of skills than the entrepreneur I was,” Waldron said. “She’s been in bigger companies with bigger systems. We need that. And the schools need that.”
Waldron had joined CA from private equity firm Berkshire Partners, an investor in CA today along with PE firms Permira and Hellman & Friedman. Private ownership has helped Waldron practice what’s known as “Conscious Capitalism,” a movement among for-profit companies that focus on social good, including doing the “right thing” for employees and customers, with the belief it leads to better returns in the long run.
Toward that end, Waldron and his wife Jennifer Waldron gave away much of their personal stake in the company in two tranches, first to The Boston Foundation in 2017 and then to CA’s employees last year. The latter gift represented $100 million in stock, or about $50,000 per employee.
“This is not a family company anymore but it has the feel of thinking long-term,” Waldron said. “It was a promise and a trust that I had with Frank, and that I’m passing on to Kelly.”
Brewing up new recipes at Keurig
Tim Cofer is getting his hands “dirty” — with dirty soda, that is.
The chief executive of Keurig Dr Pepper just launched a video series, “Taste Test with Tim.” The videos, distributed via the company’s LinkedIn and YouTube accounts, depict Cofer meeting with another KDP employee at either the company’s Burlington corporate office or its other one in Frisco, Texas, to try one or two of the drinks his company makes and expound about the taste for the camera. The first episode was shot in Burlington, and featured Julie Cudmore, the company’s director of consumer insights. The drinks of the day were Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut soda, a limited release for this summer, and Canada Dry Fruit Splash cherry ginger ale.
Cudmore explained that the coconut soda was created to take advantage of the “dirty soda” trend, which involves adding coconut flavor or other syrups to a soda. It’s a tradition in Utah that turned into a national trend a few years ago.
“It’s all the rage now,” Cofer added. “It’s lit up TikTok.”
On a recent earnings call, Cofer broke the news that the Creamy Coconut flavor is now the company’s best-performing limited release soda. In this video, he summed it up differently, calling the soda “summer in a can.”
Honoring Jack with a few jokes
Most funerals are somber affairs. Then there’s the sendoff that ad mogul-turned-philanthropist Jack Connors received last week at Saint Ignatius in Chestnut Hill.
Sure, the event was a typical Catholic Mass in many ways, albeit one packed with power brokers from Boston’s political and business worlds.
Then John Connors III, one of Connors’s sons and founder of marketing firm Boathouse, stepped up to give the eulogy. It was immediately clear there would be plenty of laughter, as he honored his father’s jocular personality by telling some jokes of his own, starting with one about the battalion of priests seated behind him (befitting of his father’s work to help the archdiocese and its schools).
John Connors talked about how his dad loved his 13 grandkids: “He often used the line, ‘If I knew how great grandkids were, I would have had them first.’ ” He mentioned how his dad was the king of the “Irish exit” at family holidays: “He would use any excuse to get the hell out of there. He had to walk the dog, feed the dog, the dog had been in the house too long.”
Jack Connors also apparently never forgave then-governor Calvin Coolidge’s union-busting activities in 1919 for putting his grandfather, a Boston cop, out of work. “Every time we would walk past the Coolidge State Park in Vermont, he would relieve himself,” John Connors recalled. “That is not a lie. In fact, I did it last week.”
Then there was his dad’s positive attitude in the hospital. Even while dying of cancer at age 82, his father remained armed with his favorite gifts, bottles of Vermont maple syrup.
“He stayed more focused on everyone else to the end, handing out bottles of maple syrup all the way to the end,” John Connors said. “Literally people would deliver oxygen, and he would be like ‘Get ‘em a bottle of maple syrup.’ ”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.