Today, it is my pleasure to speak with Annette Hopper and Levi Hammett, co-founders of Full Scope Solutions, a strategic outsourcing firm serving family offices. Annette brings more than 25 years of experience in the investment advisory industry. From 2004 through January 2025, she held key leadership roles at a Boulder- and New York-based asset allocator, serving as Partner, CFO, CCO, and COO. In these positions, she oversaw financial strategy, compliance, and operational execution for both institutional and family clients. Prior to that, she co-founded a consulting firm that served over 60 clients across multiple industries and provided outsourced CCO services for a Boulder-based asset allocator.

Levi has over 12 years of investment operations and analytics experience with an Asset Allocator operating out of both Boulder and New York City. Throughout his career, he has successfully implemented performance reporting systems, risk management platforms, data warehouses, trading workflows, and custodial relationships. His extensive expertise in investment operations, systems integration, and investment reporting has made him an expert in enhancing business processes and supporting data-driven strategies within the financial industry.

Annette and Levi, and their firm Full Scope Solutions, are valued Advisor members of FOX, and we are privileged to have their knowledge and expertise in our membership community.

There is much talk within our space about the formalization and professionalization of family office functions, but not much uniformity or consistency in defining what these functions are. Annette and Levi give us their overview of the core family office functions and their working definitions of back-office, middle-office, and front-office departments that are commonly seen among family offices.

A big part of professionalizing various family office functions is the decision whether to outsource any of them – and certainly, many families are making the decision to hand off key components of their family office operations to specialized external providers. Annette and Levi talk about what it takes to architect an outsourcing relationship that both brings in world-class expertise and capabilities and provides the family with the control, quality and customization of services they often require.

Annette and Levi offer their practical tips and advice for family principals and leaders on how best to understand the middle-office and back-office functions that serve their family – and why it is important to do that in the first place.

Going back to the concept of architecting the family office for the long term, Annette and Levi provide some suggestions to families and their family office executives on how to build a resilient infrastructure for their family office – how do they decide what to own vs. rent, build vs. outsource.

Enjoy this informative dialog with two highly experienced operators and service providers in the UHNW wealth management and family office space.

Today, I'm especially honored to welcome Ted Rich, Chief Growth Officer for Rich Products, a family-owned food company with annual sales of over $6B and a market-leader in a number of food categories, including cakes, icings, pizza, appetizers, and specialty toppings. In this position, Ted leads company­wide demand-creation strategies to accelerate growth and expansion in priority markets and segments across the globe. He is also a member of Rich's Executive Team and Board of Directors where he serves on the Finance and Audit Committee.

In 2020, Ted established the Rich Family Council for the family-owned business where he serves as the council head. Since joining Rich's in 1995, Ted has held various associate and customer-facing roles, including Executive Vice President of Organizational Excellence, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience and Europe/Middle East region leader, Regional Sales Manager of Foodservice; Strategic Sourcing Leader of Procurement; and Vice President of Toppings and Icings in North America, to name just a few.

Before joining Rich's, Ted worked for the Seattle Supersonics NBA team as a sales manager and also held positions with North West Parent Publishing in Seattle and Travers-Schutte & Company Advertising in Buffalo, NY. He currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Education Policy Committee on the Culinary Institute of America's Board of Directors and supports the Institute's mission to provide the world's best professional culinary education. Ted and his family are family office members of FOX, and we are thrilled to have them as valued members of our FOX community.

We start with the amazing journey of the Rich family and the iconic company Ted's family has now owned and operated for 80 years. Ted shares the story and path of the family business and the broader family enterprise over the past 8 decades.

Governance is an evergreen topic among family enterprises and family offices, and certainly a frequent topic for families and advisors within the FOX community. Ted talks about his family's governance evolution, highlighting when formal governance became a necessity and how the family went about establishing these structures, both for the business and for the broader family enterprise.

One practical tool Ted recommends to fellow families and their multigenerational enterprises is planning forward. He describes the multi-year planning process and discipline his family has employed throughout their shared journey and outlines some of the specific steps, methods, and tools they have relied on to always have a long-term, forward-looking view of where the family enterprise is going.

The Rich family leadership has embraced the principle of inclusivity. Ted talks about how they have operationalized this belief in inclusivity and describes the various processes and structures that have been instrumental to bringing more family members into the journey and ensuring strong engagement with the rising generations.

Do not miss this exclusive and highly educational conversation with a distinguished family principal and leader of one of the most storied and successful family enterprises in America.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Maura Harris, Founder of Maura Harris & Company, an operational due diligence (ODD) consulting boutique. With over 25 years of experience in alternative asset management, Maura has worked for premier asset managers, fund of funds, RIAs, and family offices. Her core services include Operational Due Diligence (ODD) Readiness, ODD Document Review, ODD Full Reviews, ODD Audit and ODD Verification, as well as add-on specialty due diligence.

Prior to working with private clients, Maura was the Head of Due Diligence at Bostwick Capital, a fund of funds, from 2016 to 2024. In addition, she provided consulting and advisory services for a broad range of firms including AITEC, a technology peer group, Centrl Inc., a fintech company digitizing investor questionnaires, Symphonic Leadership Partners, a change management advisory group, and Harness All Possibilities, a nonprofit helping individuals transform their value to meet the future of work. From 2006 to 2015, Maura developed and managed the operational due diligence program at The Permal Group. Permal was a global multi-strategy, multi-manager investing in hedge funds, private equity, and real assets. Prior to Permal, she worked in accounting, operations and due diligence at GAM Investments and Bank of America Alternative Group, as well as the private equity group at Prudential Financial.

In this episode, we discus Maura's core area of expertise – operational risk and due diligence (ODD) for family offices. She explains why this discipline is important and what families, family office executives, and family advisors should do to stay focused on in this specialized field of ODD.

Maura leads us through the different types of operational risks family offices need to understand and mitigate and outlines the various dimensions of ODD that she covers in her work with family offices.

One practical need and challenge for family offices is how to assess managers and vendors for operational risks. Maura talks about this need and how family office leaders should think about and manage these external risks that are affecting their operation.

Maura explains how family leaders and family office executives should think about the value of ODD and offers her tips on the best methods and tools to articulate, measure, and mitigate these operational risks.

Enjoy this highly instructional conversation with a deep expert in the ODD discipline as applied to family enterprises and family offices.