Merrill Lynch’s Myah Moore Irick: From Humble Beginnings to Team Leader

Speaking with Barron’s Advisor, Irick, who credits scholarships for helping her overcome humble beginnings, explains how she has built a $300 million practice from scratch in three years and how she’s giving back to schools. She reveals the reason she’s focused on building a diverse team. And she describes how the experience of winning a beauty pageant—Miss Oregon in 2003—helps her to advise the sudden-wealth clients that are a focus of her team.  

Where are you from? I’m originally from Oahu, in Hawaii. I come from a multicultural, multiracial family. My father is Black, and my mother is Korean and white. Hawaii doesn’t have a large Black community, and that created a very different experience for us, one that wasn’t always positive. And on top of it, we weren’t wealthy; I grew up in rather humble circumstances. Even though we didn’t have a lot of resources, my parents did a good job of instilling in me a strong work ethic, an understanding of the importance of education, and a desire to lift others up along their journey. I’m a first-generation college graduate, and I definitely think my upbringing influenced my work today and my desire to help families. 

How did you end up in the wealth management business on the mainland? Let me share a little bit about how I got to college. I had a series of very unglamorous jobs growing up. I had a paper route, but because I didn’t have a bike I’d walk door to door with a little satchel. I bused tables at a restaurant. This was basically how I paid for college applications and started saving up to leave the island when I was 17. I ended up going to Lewis & Clark College, in Portland, Ore. 

My love and appreciation for education was really amplified there. In my final year in college, I had the privilege to serve as Miss Oregon with the Miss USA/Miss Universe organization. I would travel around the state to speak about equity in education. That helped to form my decision to become a college president. I wanted to help shape the institutions where first-generation, underresourced students like me would come to learn and to grow and to help propel families like mine out of poverty.

I really believed that access to higher education was the golden ticket. So after I finished my work in Oregon, I moved to New York to attend Columbia University for graduate school. I earned a Master of Arts in organizational leadership and organizational psychology. [Irick later earned an M.B.A. as well.—Ed.]

While I attended Columbia I also worked there. I held several senior administrative roles; I advised families on philanthropy and estate planning solutions. Those roles, combined with my background in education with a love of finance was where my management journey began. 

Can you say more about the experience of becoming Miss Oregon in 2003? It was just kind of a blip. I decided a month before to compete after someone encouraged me to compete for money for graduate school. And then I won, and it was just this thing that kind of happened to me. We work with a number of athletes, influencers, and people in the entertainment space, and that experience actually adds a lot of value to the conversation. You know, being in the spotlight, having to deal with lots of people coming at you for different things. And then having to understand how to manage through a lumpy monthly cash flow when you’re in that world, and how to protect your assets in a different way.

You worked in the education world for about eight years before joining PNC as a wealth management vice president. And then you joined J.P. Morgan Private Bank. What was the catalyst for changing careers? I think it was the individuals I was serving at Columbia. In my last role there I worked at the business school, where I raised money from some of our most successful alums, people who worked in private equity and in the hedge fund space and in wealth management. It was people challenging me and explaining to me that I might have a bigger impact if I was on the other side. It was them telling me, “Maybe you can have a bigger impact if you’re the one creating scholarships and also helping clients think about their full balance sheet, as opposed to just philanthropy. I’m still thankful for those individuals who challenged me.”

You joined Merrill Lynch in 2020 and started forming a team. Please describe your goals in building the team. I was very intentional when it came to building my team. I felt that there weren’t the types of advisors that need to be present for the sudden-wealth population. That’s really my specialty. When I thought about growing my team, I wanted to make sure that it had all the aspects of diversity. The face of the world continues to change, but I really feel like our industry hasn’t evolved as fast as it should. When I say diversity, I mean in all forms: diversity of experience, diversity of thought, religious diversity, people who have lived in different parts of the country, multigenerational diversity. I believe a diverse team is better to be able to meet the demands and needs of this changing face [of the client population]. 

Identifying talent for my team has actually been a struggle, because I want team members who are different from me and who bring something unique to the table. I wanted to make sure we’re bringing in people who weren’t typical advisors, people who may have been business owners, or lived in different parts of the country. People who maybe came from the risk-management/insurance field, people who are at different life stages, who aren’t necessarily coming from a wealthy background. I think all of that is very important. So as I’ve been building out my team, I’ve been looking for people in each one of these categories.

How many people would you hire right now if you had the perfect candidates? Probably four to five, because I believe every senior member of a team should have someone who’s just coming up, that they can support and educate but also receive reverse mentoring. I’m partnered with Brianna Sullivan, my associate who is now an advisor, who has come far in a short amount of time. By spending time with her every day, I’m not necessarily perfecting my craft, but I’m getting better at it, because I’m having to reexplain it to her. And it works in reverse as well: She’s pointing out things that I may be missing because she’s working in a different way. I think everyone benefits if they have this system, almost like a buddy system. 

Your team manages about $300 million of assets, which is pure organic growth at a rate of $100 million a year. Can you describe your growth goals for your team? I’m ambitious, but I’m also intentional. I don’t want growth just for growth’s sake; I want us to have quality relationships with our clients and not overcommit ourselves. Somewhere around $100 million-plus a year is probably still where we’re focused. When I think about growth, I also see it from a geographic perspective. I’m based in Pittsburgh, but I’ve actually been spending a lot more time in northern Florida, and we have clients all over the country. I want to make sure that we have the proper representation nationally, not necessarily somebody in each state we serve, but at least in each time zone. 

Can you say more about your focus on clients of sudden wealth? It is our primary focus and what we’re well known for. Sudden wealth is when someone comes into a large influx of money rather quickly. It could be overnight or it could be over a few years. It might be a founder or a senior executive whose compensation package doubled, tripled, or quadrupled in a short time period. It can be a professional athlete with a large contract, somebody who won a lottery or had a legal settlement.  

Sudden-wealth clients need to build an entire team rather quickly. It isn’t unusual for someone to call us because they’re having this financial event, and they need guidance in finding every single other professional they need in a two- or three-week period. We can find that realtor or that estate planning attorney or that CPA in L.A. or in Beverly Hills or wherever and coordinate with them. We spend a lot of time not only advising these clients about investment solutions and their wealth plan, but also coaching them on making decisions and then continuing to follow up and execute on those decisions. 

How do you find these sudden-wealth clients? Merrill has a great platform for us to use, from our LinkedIn program to how we’re able to create our brochures, to our personalized website. That has allowed us to show up as who we truly are and thus attract the right type of clients. When I came here we couldn’t actively solicit past clients, so most of our clients are new. So we’ve come up with strategies around the types of events we want to do and audiences we want to be in front of. I probably do a speaking engagement every other week on sudden wealth or impact investing or how to build an inclusive and multigenerational type of team. So that’s where we get a lot of clients. 

We do a lot of speaking engagements, a lot of small, curated events. We also have a large online presence, and that could be through interviews on podcasts or in newsletters or things of that nature. We’re all about education; our main goal is to use our privileged positions to educate the people that we want to serve. If they end up becoming clients of ours, it’s a true blessing. And if they become clients of someone else, we’ve given them that much more information to empower themselves to move forward. 

How is your team, which consists of four advisors and two client associates, structured? I do a significant amount of the business development. We each have a set number of families that we work with, but we overlap. The family might know each of us for something different, because we all have different skill sets. I might come in a lot more in the estate planning and strategic philanthropy; somebody else on our team might come in and talk about alternative investments. It just depends on what the client needs. That’s why I love that we still have a relatively small team: We can be flexible and add value where it’s needed most.

What are your clients most concerned about these days? They’re most concerned about inflation and increasing interest rates. You can be incredibly wealthy, but you’re still going to be impacted by rising costs; that’s not something you can dodge. And they’re concerned about the impact on their generational wealth if volatile markets continue year over year.

How are you positioning portfolios right now? Every client has a customized solution. But we’re increasingly using alternative investments as appropriate, just as a volatility dampener. We’re also leaning in with those clients who want to align their wealth with their values through impact solutions. Impact portfolios are continuing to perform better in times of volatility.

Have you been able as an advisor to make the impact you’d hoped on education philanthropy? I personally love it. We now have a scholarship at my undergrad school, Lewis & Clark; we have one at Teachers College at Columbia University. We have one at my husband’s high school; we have one with a Black community foundation called the Poise Foundation. It has been incredibly fulfilling, considering how we started out. We both came from humble beginnings and are first-generation college graduates. [Irick is married to Jaime Irick, an executive with

PPG Industries
.

]

We do work with a number of family foundations as well, and we also manage investments for a number of nonprofits and universities. For private clients, when somebody says they want education to be part of their philanthropic planning, I find great joy in having that conversation. It’s empowering to help them think through how to make the gift in the most impactful manner to their personal balance sheet. It’s also been a joy to give universities guidance on their investment policy statements and how to align their mission with their investments and educating their staff about raising money. 

How do you recharge outside of work? I have three young children—a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 4-year-old—and my husband is an executive who travels a lot. The kids are fun, and they keep me young, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily recharging. I do like to jump on our trampoline in our basement with them or play soccer with them. But I actually recharge through my community work and board work. 

Thanks, Myah.

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