Co-Founder
Shana Amster
"The families who've had the hard conversations early are in a completely different position than those who haven't. My job is to make sure people get the chance to have them."
Shana studied fashion marketing in the joint program between FIT and the Sy Syms School of Business. It was an education in what things look like from the outside. What drew her to financial services was the inside; the actual structure of how families build security, what holds up under pressure, and what doesn't.
Her focus is on the conversations most advisors defer. Small business owners who are overpaying in taxes and under-saving for retirement because nobody has modeled what a better structure would look like. Families who haven't thought through what it would cost to transfer everything they've built. Parents who want to fund education and empower the next generation but have never mapped it against everything else they're trying to accomplish. She believes these conversations don't require extraordinary circumstances to have, they just require someone willing to have them honestly and early.
She is involved with Felicia's Farm in Tucson, an organization started by her father and named for her mother, which grows fresh food for soup kitchens and delivers flowers to hospices. She has four kids, two dogs of her own, and fosters dogs in the gaps. She reads psychological thrillers, goes to live music whenever she can, and approaches a complicated estate structure with the same patience she brings to a difficult puzzle.
Danny began his career inside a large, complex institution, where financial decisions had to hold up under real scrutiny. He started at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn in 1985 and rose to Budget Director, Assistant Vice President for Finance, and Acting CFO. That environment taught him to pressure-test before committing, to ask not just whether a structure is technically sound, but whether it will hold when circumstances change. What drew him out of the institutional world in 2006 was the chance to apply that same discipline where the stakes are personal.
His focus is on whether a strategy genuinely improves the client's position, not just whether it looks efficient on paper. Business owners with concentrated tax exposure who have never modeled what a better structure would look like. Families whose investments, insurance, and estate planning have never been evaluated as a single system. Couples where one partner understands the plan and one doesn't...yet. In each case, the approach is the same: understand what the family is actually trying to accomplish, evaluate whether the structure fits, and be honest about the trade-offs before anything moves forward.
Danny splits his time between Israel and Las Vegas. He has completed 10 marathons and numerous century rides, disciplines that reward the same qualities that make a financial plan hold: patience, consistency, and a willingness to stay the course when the middle miles are hard. He most values time with his wife, children, and grandchildren.
“No strategy should move forward until the numbers are clear and both partners understand exactly how it works.”
Co-Founder
Danny Cutler