We help you discover your family’s vision, purpose, and values—deeply rooting your wealth in a strong foundation that grows and guides future generations.
Much like building a business, creating and preserving wealth for your family requires a strategic approach and careful planning. At Castellan, we specialize in providing bespoke, in-house solutions that cater to the unique needs of entrepreneurs.
Our approach is comprehensive, integrating financial management, strategic planning, and legacy-building to ensure your wealth endures across generations. Grounded in your values and vision, we help define and strengthen your legacy, empowering you and your family to achieve continued success and providing the next generation with the tools to thrive.
What Sets Us Apart: Aligning Wealth with Purpose
True wealth is more than financial success—it’s about the values, purpose, and vision that guide your family across generations. Our structured planning process helps ensure that your wealth is a tool for fulfilling your long-term goals while preserving what matters most to your family.
Values Assessment
We help your family engage in thoughtful discussions to help define its core beliefs. By identifying what is most important—whether it’s philanthropy, entrepreneurship, education, or financial security—we connect these values to your broader financial strategy. This process creates alignment among family members and provides a foundation for making meaningful decisions.
Vision
Creation
We collaborate with you to draft a family purpose statement or guiding principles document. This serves as a unifying vision that reflects your family’s shared goals, helping to guide both financial and personal decisions. Whether it’s ensuring responsible wealth stewardship, fostering a legacy of giving, or empowering the next generation, this document provides clarity and continuity for the future.
The result is a structured document that captures your family’s values and purpose — not just for financial planning, but as a lasting guide for living. It preserves the lessons, principles, and vision that will shape your family’s decisions, relationships, and legacy for generations to come.
We provide proprietary reporting and data visualization tools, allowing you to spend less time managing data and more time leveraging it.
Managing wealth requires clear insights and reliable data. Our proprietary reporting and data visualization tools give you a complete view of your financial landscape, streamlining complex information into actionable insights. With secure, real-time access to your data, you can spend less time organizing and safeguarding information—and more time making informed decisions for your family’s future.
Family Office Services
Our current investment strategy offering includes:
- Guiding you in understanding your goals
- Oversight of your exiting private investments
- Functioning as your deal team to provide comprehensive due diligence of new investments you are offered
- Applying best practices across portfolio investments
- Providing a framework for entrepreneurs to build future and/or existing businesses
Castellan’s investment team will guide you on understanding your goals for your future investment.
We will then help you create and maintain the three portfolios for successful investment:
Safety Portfolio: Manage risk, create a margin of safety, and fund
SAFETY EXAMPLES:
- 3-7 times your recurring annual expenses based upon risk tolerance assessment
- Unencumbered real estate
- Short term sovereign government backed bonds
- Cash and cash equivalents
Market Portfolio: Fund annual budget & maintain your lifestyle
MARKET EXAMPLES:
- Cover your lifestyle & recurring living expenses
- Include inflation protection & tax considerations
- Stocks
- Mutual Funds/ETFs
Aspirational Portfolio: Create dynastic wealth and impactful giving
ASPIRATIONAL EXAMPLES:
- Fund Aspirational Goals of the family
- Assets that will go to Children and Grandchildren and Charity
- Private equity and Venture Capital
- Deal Team Services for Direct Investments
Oversight of Existing Private Investments
- Stepping in for you on the board and monthly one-on-one meetings with the CEO
- Providing high-level resources to assist in corporate development to support growth through M&A considerations
- Implementing a compilation of best practices to find areas for improvement
- Handling the exit of businesses when a sale is requested, or the economics are no longer advantageous
Evaluate New Private Investments
- Functioning as your deal team to provide comprehensive due diligence of new investments, both directly and through fund offerings
- Capacity to analyze businesses from early-stage ventures to mature entities
- Emphasis on tax efficiency when considering transactions
- Direct investing in high margin businesses where technology can be disruptively applied
- Healthcare
- Enterprise Software
- Fintech
- Sustainability
- Brands
Best Practices Book
- Created and maintain a Best Practices Database – a compilation of what has worked for our highly successful clients and businesses within our portfolio
- Drive implementation of best practices across the portfolio
- Provide a framework for entrepreneurs to build their businesses
Transaction Advisory
Full deal lifecycle support: Assist throughout the entire transaction process, from initial deal evaluation and due diligence to negotiation and post-merger integration.
Financial due diligence: In-depth analysis of a target company’s financial performance, including quality of earnings, working capital, and debt structure. Attend meetings with bankers / brokers to act as Your Advisor. Review deal documents, verify all calculations relevant to proceeds & transaction price.
Valuation analysis: Determining the fair market value of a company for transaction purposes.
Tax & Estate Advisory: Analyzing the tax implications of a transaction and structuring to minimize tax liabilities for income tax and estate tax planning for family.
Deal & Term structuring: Advising on the best terms and transaction structure (stock sale, asset sale, etc.) to achieve client objectives.
Providing Tax and Cash Flow Modeling
- Coordinate with your advisers on existing tax planning and development of innovative tax strategies
- Prepare for the monetization of private investments
- Tax impact forecasting – harvest taxable losses
- Sophisticated Cash Flow Modeling with Dashboard and Secure Vault
Developing Your Estate Plan
- Maximize wealth transfer strategies for the family
- Advanced Estate Attorney and CPA experienced working with high net worth families on team
- Continuous monitoring of wealth & life changes to meet needs of the family
Our Goals When Planning Your Philanthropy Aspirations and Legacy:
- Protecting and Building Your Legacy
- Laying a Family Foundation
Steps to Building Your Legacy & Meeting Your Charitable Goals
- Comprehensive Legacy Planning Process
- Collaborate with families on their values, purpose, and mission statements
- Develop strategies & charitable goals
- Educate the next generation on your family values, finance, and philanthropy advantages
- Ensuring your family values and charitable goals WILL BE ADVANCED
- Establish mission, goals, and objectives
- Advanced grant-making ideas
Steps to Laying Your Family’s Foundation
- Assisting in the creation of Family Foundations
- Help direct your donations toward effective causes
- Monitor organizations’ KPIs to confirm the impact and report the results
- Operational management of Family Foundations
- Coordination and oversight of Director/Trustee
- Assist and review the filing of 990 and tax compliance
Effective wealth management starts with clear insights and dependable information. Our proprietary reporting and data visualization tools transform complex financial details into a clear, actionable view of your entire financial landscape. With secure, real-time access, you can move beyond simply managing data—empowering you to make informed, confident decisions that protect and grow your family’s future.
Our operations and family office is tasked with two support systems:
- Reporting and Legal Support
- Risk Management
Keeping You Informed
- Accounting, personal balance sheets, income statements, cash flow documents, personal finance reporting, domestic payroll, and tax preparation
- Investment reporting with commentary individualized for the client
We’re Here for Legal Support
- Coordinate your outside legal advisors
- Manage special litigation situations
- Governance and registration of legal entities
Risk Management
- Determining proper insurance coverages
- Assistance with major personal financial transactions
We handle the complexities of wealth so you can
focus on what matters most
Our comprehensive approach ensures that high-net-worth families benefit from strategic tax optimization, estate planning, and wealth transfer solutions that align with their long-term financial goals.
By leveraging advanced tax structures and proactive planning, we help clients minimize liabilities while maximizing opportunities for sophisticated asset protection and wealth accumulation.
Family Office Team
Barry Brauch
Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer
Barry began his career as a CPA at Deloitte & Touche and later held senior finance and CFO roles at Fifth Third Bancorp. He co-founded Castellan in 2018 after leading a successful recapitalization, restructuring, and sale of American Founders Bancorp, delivering significant returns to investors.
Brian Cohoon
Director of Wealth Management
Brian has over 30 years of experience in financial, estate, and trust planning. Before joining Castellan Group, he held senior roles at regional trust companies, launched a financial planning division for a publicly traded bank, and helped establish an independent insurance agency.
Kate Ponder
Director of Client Services
Kate is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in client services, back-office operations, and compliance support. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Mount Holyoke College, where she also majored in Mathematics and Biological Sciences while excelling as a Division III lacrosse captain and field hockey player.
Ethan Bednarczyk
Accounting Manager
Ethan joined Castellan in April 2025 and oversees accounting for the firm and its affiliates. Previously, he was a multifamily accountant at a real estate development firm. He holds a B.B.A. in Accounting and an M.B.A. from Eastern Kentucky University.
