PLANADVISER: How do you incorporate purpose or mission into your day-to-day work?
Hamilton: My purpose is deeply rooted in personal history. I have watched my own family members navigate the severe financial disruptions that can occur without proper guidance. I saw retired relatives panic-sell during the global financial crisis, permanently damaging their retirement security, while others had their lifetime savings entirely eradicated by long-term-care costs. I also see younger family members struggling to balance student loans and saving for a home down payment with the daunting reality of needing to start their retirement savings. These experiences drive my daily purpose. When I am reviewing investment options or consulting on plan design, I am not just looking at numbers on a page; I know I am actively working to prevent another family from experiencing that same financial vulnerability. My goal is to minimize friction (be that friction from high fees, difficult to navigate technology, confusing plan provisions), creating a seamless path that allows everyday participants to achieve a secure, fulfilling and successful retirement.
PLANADVISER: What have you done that you are most proud of at work? Personally?
Hamilton: Professionally, I am proudest of my work with smaller, often underserved plans that lack institutional support or suffer from weaker economies of scale. These are the clients for whom an adviser can make the most immediate, life-altering impact. For instance, I recently partnered with a small business whose plan sponsors and participants were being held back by total plan fees north of 1%. By restructuring the plan, renegotiating vendor relationships and leveraging our firm’s insights, I was able to successfully drive their all-in costs down to just a small fraction of that. This drastically improves the compounding growth of every participant’s account balance over time.
Personally, my proudest accomplishments center on my family. I have a 2-year-old daughter, and watching her grow into a happy, confident and funny young girl is incredibly rewarding. After a long, demanding workday, it takes deliberate effort to bring high energy home, but I like to think the hours dedicated to reading books, playing ‘rollercoaster’ in empty boxes, and singing and dancing to songs each night is a reason she is doing so well.
PLANADVISER: What outside interests or experiences have influenced how you approach your career?
Hamilton: I am an avid cooking and baking nerd. I spend a significant amount of my spare time studying culinary techniques and recipes through instructional videos and articles. In cooking, a technique mastered in one recipe, such as how to bloom spices or execute a proper sear and deglaze, can be applied to elevate an entirely different dish in the future. I approach my retirement practice with this exact same desire for continuous learning across various disciplines. While my primary focus is on defined contribution and defined benefit plans, I intentionally study adjacent fields like wealth management, estate planning and nonqualified plans. By treating the broader financial landscape as an interconnected kitchen, I can borrow advanced strategies from institutional asset management and estate planning to create comprehensive, innovative solutions for my retirement plan clients. This cross-disciplinary approach ensures my plan sponsors and participants receive sophisticated advice that goes far beyond standard plan mechanics.