Stewart & Patten

Stewart & Patten

Stewart & Patten operates as a boutique wealth management firm anchored by founder Linda Stewart Patten from its office in Lafayette, California. The firm's practice emerged to serve a distinctly Bay Area client profile: families with significant single-stock exposure from long-tenured careers at firms that eventually went public, a wealth-creation pattern that accelerated through the region's technology cycles. This origin shapes a planning-heavy rather than product-distribution approach. The firm's core work involves concentrated equity risk management, typically through structured diversification programs using exchange funds, prepaid variable forwards, and direct indexing strategies rather than outright liquidation. Stewart & Patten coordinates trust and estate planning for multi-generational transfers of low-basis concentrated positions. Its investment remit spans public equities, municipal and corporate fixed income, private real assets, and select private equity and venture fund commitments sourced through regional GP relationships. The firm has maintained a disciplined geographic footprint limited to the East Bay and broader Northern California corridor. Stewart & Patten operates from a single Lafayette location with a deliberately lean team structure, serving fewer than 100 client relationships. The firm does not operate a family of proprietary funds or a multi-family office platform, instead acting as an outsourced CIO for each family, directing assets toward third-party managers and direct indexing solutions. The firm has not publicly disclosed AUM figures, consistent with a privately held practice operating below regulatory reporting thresholds. What distinguishes Stewart & Patten structurally is its practice concentration in concentrated stock solutions — a technical competency typically found within private wealth divisions of large banks, but delivered from an independent, non-bank platform. This independence allows the firm to access exchange fund and direct indexing providers without the product-push incentives of a large brokerage firm. Succession remains tied to founder Linda Stewart Patten's continued leadership, making this a classic single-practitioner-model firm with deep local roots in an unusually wealthy micro-market.