We are a tight-knit team of experts, and we want to keep it that way. A focused institutional boutique can be pro-active in protecting its environment and since every incoming personality changes the organism, we carefully choose. We get a lot of resumes from incredibly bright, talented, driven people, but we need individuals who really want to be part of a team and understand what that means in terms of mutual learning and mutual respect and mutual teaching. Our culture calls for lots of multi-tasking and the roles are more blurred than in a large firm. It's not for everyone.

In addition to hiring the right people, its giving people enough freedom in their positions to own their jobs, which brings with it complete accountability. You have authority, you have responsibility, and you have accountability. We've built a web of inter-accountability. It's not just one-on-one; it's accountability to the team, to the specific project group you're working with.

People here are given unlimited upside potential. The greatest gratification comes from feeling that all your efforts and talents directly affect the bottom line, that you are positively regarded and that you are respected for your skill set. There's no ceiling.

We add the right people when necessary, but to keep the human component as focused as possible we are also very focused on technology. Consultants and others are always surprised that a privately owned firm of our size has built the sorts of resources we've built. Not only do we have a research platform that serves as a portfolio management laboratory, testing any investment concept we can conceive of, we also have a straight-through processing that brings enormous efficiency.

Here the client is boss, in every form of the word. We are oriented toward collaboration, internally and externally. So we tend to attract clients who are more analytic and who view their managers more as a resource. Their requests for information are a source of learning. It would be easier to be less responsive, to have more mass appeal. But that doesn't fit our personality. If you want to keep being mentally challenged, if you want to keep pushing the research envelope, this is the best way to do it.