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Strategic Advisor·RIA Rollups

Penny Phillips

Founder and Strategic Consultant at Thrivos Consulting; Co-Founder and President of Journey Strategic Wealth

New York, NY

PP
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Why they matter

Built and sold a $5B RIA rollup to Hightower in 2026; now shapes advisor strategy for a $25B+ platform and sees RIA M&A deal flow firsthand.

Background

Penny Phillips is a New York City-based wealth-management entrepreneur who founded Thrivos Consulting in 2018 to provide practice-management coaching to financial advisors, after earlier roles at New York Life Wealth Management (2010-2015) and Envestnet. In January 2021 she co-founded Journey Strategic Wealth, an RIA "rollup" built to acquire and support independent advisory practices, growing it from roughly $2 billion to $5 billion in AUM before Hightower Advisors acquired the firm in March 2026 and folded it into its Hightower Signature Wealth division, where she now leads advisor strategy and client experience.

Notable deals

  • 2018
    Founded Thrivos Consulting, a practice-management coaching and consulting firm for financial advisors
  • 2022
    Co-founded Journey Strategic Wealth alongside Michael Brown, Brian Flynn, Charles Britton and Damian Lobasso as an RIA rollup, growing it to $2.3B+ AUM within two years
  • 2026
    Journey Strategic Wealth (~$5B AUM, 24 professionals) acquired by Hightower Advisors as first external add to Hightower Signature Wealth; Phillips named Head of Advisor Strategy and Client Experience

Call-prep brief

Background

  • Founded Thrivos Consulting (2018), a practice-management coaching firm for financial advisors, after roles at New York Life Wealth Management (2010-2015) and a stint at Envestnet.
  • Co-founded Journey Strategic Wealth (Jan 2021) with Michael Brown, Brian Flynn, Charles Britton, and Damian Lobasso — widely cited as the first millennial-woman-led RIA "rollup."
  • Grew Journey from ~$2B to ~$5B AUM (24 professionals, 16 advisors, ~1,000 clients) before it was acquired by Hightower Advisors in March 2026 and merged into Hightower Signature Wealth (HTSW).

Current Focus

  • Now Head of Advisor Strategy and Client Experience at Hightower Signature Wealth, which crossed $25B AUM across 27 locations post-deal.
  • Continues to run Thrivos Consulting and "The Study Group," an advisor practice-management community.
  • Regular contributor to WealthManagement.com and industry podcasts on RIA growth, succession, and next-gen talent integration.

What She Cares About

  • Practice management, succession planning, and bringing next-gen advisors into legacy books of business.
  • "Personalization at scale" — pairing M&A-driven growth with a high-touch client experience.

Sensitivities

  • She now operates inside a large acquirer (Hightower) rather than as an independent operator — may be limited in discussing deal terms, equity rollover, or competing platforms.
  • Journey's advisors and clients were mid-integration into HTSW as of the deal close; integration friction could be a sensitive topic.

Questions to Ask

  1. What made Hightower the right home for Journey versus staying independent or partnering with another consolidator?
  2. How is HTSW approaching advisor recruitment and retention differently than Journey did as a standalone rollup?
  3. What operational gaps did you hit scaling from ~$2B to ~$5B that a platform or capital partner could solve?

Outreach draft

Subject
Your RIA Rollup Journey and Hightower Move
Hi Penny, I've been following your path from Thrivos to building Journey Strategic Wealth into a $5B RIA rollup, and now your move into Hightower Signature Wealth as Head of Advisor Strategy and Client Experience. Scaling a rollup from the ground up and then integrating into a much larger platform is exactly the perspective our team is looking for as we evaluate opportunities in the RIA aggregation space. Would you be open to a 20-minute call in the next couple of weeks? I'd love to hear your take on what makes an RIA platform attractive to independent advisors today, and any early lessons from the Hightower integration. Best, [Your Name]

Linked companies

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