Ballast Capital

Ballast Capital

Founded by John V. Boardman, III, the firm positions itself as an independent fiduciary, structuring its advisory around a personal-CFO model for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth households. The Lexington-based practice targets wealth accumulators, business owners, and medical professionals, weaving income-tax planning, estate structures, and charitable giving into a single service relationship rather than referring those functions out. The firm is explicit about its geographic anchor, describing itself as deeply grounded in its local community while maintaining a niche national clientele. Ballast practices plan-first portfolio construction — asset allocation derives from each household's financial plan rather than starting with a model portfolio. Chief Investment Officer Brian Burton oversees investment management that the firm describes as agnostic to any product family, custodian, or vendor. The firm builds non-proprietary portfolios that span public equities, fixed income, and alternatives, with an explicit commitment to rebalancing discipline. Its client base includes business owners, medical professionals, and nonprofit organizations, and its marketing singles out the specific challenges those groups face. The wealth-management stack extends to trust planning through Director of Estate Planning & Tax Frank E. Yozwiak, a credentialed attorney with an LL.M. in Taxation. The firm fields fourteen professionals from its Vine Street office in downtown Lexington. The leadership group shows concentrated CFP® density: five of the six named principals hold the marks, and the COO and Director of Financial Planning layer Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA®) and Certified Private Wealth Advisor (CPWA®) certifications onto their CFP® base. The team includes a dedicated Chief Compliance Officer and an in-house IT specialist, suggesting operational intentionality beyond a typical lifestyle practice. The firm communicates regularly through market updates and financial-planning webinars under its "Ballast Atheneum" content initiative. Ballast's architecture is distinct in its formalized internal specializations — a J.D./LL.M. for estate tax, a CIMA®-certified CIO for investment strategy, a CEPA®-certified COO for business-owner transitions — each reporting to a founder who acts as relationship lead. That structure means a single client household encounters the firm as a multi-disciplinary operating table rather than through a single advisor who coordinates externally with attorneys and tax preparers. The resulting delivery model bookends the wealth-management value chain from tax-code optimization through portfolio implementation under one employment roof.