{"id":320397,"date":"2025-12-17T06:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T06:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/320397\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T06:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T06:19:15","slug":"ten-to-watch-in-2026-sara-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/320397\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten to Watch in 2026: Sara Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sara Baker\u2019s path to wealth management began in an unconventional place: volleyball courts. She was a star athlete at Wichita State University, and volleyball was her passion. \u201cMy parents were jocks. I was a jock,\u201d she jokes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether the role is setter, hitter or libero, volleyball is a sport as much about team cooperation as it is personal glory, and those lessons stayed with Baker into her professional career. She received a Master of Laws in taxation from the University of Washington in St. Louis and a JD from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. She landed at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, a global law firm, and ended up working in mergers and acquisitions for client Marty Bicknell, CEO of Mariner Wealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn big law you pick a path. You can try and be a rainmaker and become a partner, or you can go in-house for one of your clients,\u201d Baker said. \u201cI met Marty and Cheryl Bicknell, and they were doing big things with M&A. I thought I could make a bigger impact in-house.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baker said she fit in with Mariner\u2019s culture of learning and entrepreneurship, she said, and she was well-suited to a role that required cultivating relationships and building new teams in a fast-growing business. \u201cEvery service was being acquired and built out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Related:Ten to Watch in 2026: Mier Wang<\/a><\/p>\n

After three years with Mariner, she met John Bunch, whose firm, The Mutual Fund Store, had just been acquired by Edelman Financial Engines. Bunch, at that time COO and executive vice president of Edelman Financial Engines, needed help with the integration and building the teams, and Baker jumped at the opportunity. \u201cThat\u2019s my jam,\u201d Baker said. \u201cI like to build things. You get to be creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker spent 6 1\/2 years with Edelman, playing a key role in its transformation and growth. She helped oversee more mergers, building and leading an integration management team, as well as building out a tax planning team. The experience helped her understand the importance of having in-house specialists for a robust advisory firm. \u201cIt\u2019s about how do you create and build relationships and trust with people,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you are a true expert in something, you can build a rapport. The quicker you do, the more you will have trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker likens the concept of specialization in financial services to careers in medicine and law. \u201cEveryone talks about segmenting by AUM. But you don\u2019t see other services do that. \u2026 I think when you focus on niches, it makes you intentional on what problems you are trying to solve, and that\u2019s where you are going to add value. That\u2019s where you can win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:Ten to Watch in 2026: Channing Olson<\/a><\/p>\n

Baker wanted to test those beliefs and partnered with two colleagues from Mariner to launch her own RIA, Triad Wealth Partners, from scratch. The firm has since grown to surpass $1 billion in AUM. That\u2019s when John Bunch came calling again. He had moved to Allworth Financial, a $30 billion AUM RIA that had grown rapidly through mergers and acquisitions, and Bunch wanted Baker to help oversee the ongoing integrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a blast,\u201d she said. \u201cI am really grateful to be somewhere like Allworth. There\u2019s so much philosophical alignment on the fiduciary model. And it\u2019s exciting to work on a team where we are driven by the same things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2026, Baker said Allworth will focus on marketing its achievements, pursuing \u201cintentional\u201d growth and building the next generation of talent, all to set up Allworth to be a \u201cfirm that\u2019s around in 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sara Baker\u2019s path to wealth management began in an unconventional place: volleyball courts. She was a star athlete…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-320397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-personalfinance","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}