Darnell Jackson

Darnell works with businesses, accredited investors, estate trustees, attorneys, and CPAs to help them identify, clarify, and reach their financial aims and those of their constituents. Darnell concentrates on being a servant leader and provider of financial services. He focuses on being a keen listener to identify, satisfy and provide the foundation for his guiding principle: “client needs come first.”

Darnell’s mission is to produce goal-based financial solutions, appropriate recommendations, and full disclosure. He concentrates on sectors such as the medical community and nonprofits, collaborating with medical and related healthcare systems, ecclesiastic and educational institutions, the leadership of those organizations, and individuals (ranging from private business owners, entrepreneurs, and CEO founders, including Fortune 500 board members with highly concentrated stock positions). Darnell leverages advanced technology and state-of-the-art strategies in their core services of asset and liability management and retirement plan asset management (including defined contribution and defined benefit plans).

As a Detroit native, Darnell has always been passionate about providing capital market access to a region perennially underrepresented and underbanked by major financial institutions. His goal at the start of his career is the same today: create financial tide pools that lift clients to greater financial knowledge and investment progress while creating, and passing on, new wealth in an orderly and strategic manner.

Darnell attributes his longstanding client relationships to service: e.g., beginning with a thorough understanding of each client’s needs, meticulous attention to detail, excellent execution, and continuous monitoring of local, national and mega trends, and how they impact each client’s needs.

His early experience in client service and fixed income led to successfully attracting over a billion dollars in pension plan assets, concentrating in tax-free and convertible bonds, and becoming a local liaison to public and corporate finance investment bankers. Since 1993, serving as senior book running manager, Darnell has been responsible for more than $9.5 billion of public and corporate finance projects in Southeastern Michigan, including the Ford Field Football Stadium, the Metropolitan Detroit Airport, and the Warren Valley Golf Course.

Darnell joined Morgan Stanley in 2009, and his passion to expand capital market access to overlooked Southeast Michigan burns even brighter today. He is energized by the technological advances taking place in biotechnology, healthcare, and educational and ecclesiastic institutions. “Moore’s Law [of ever quickening technology advances] is going to reveal startling discoveries. I believe more technological change will occur over the next five years than over the last 100 years. He is strategically organized to embrace change, upgrade operational methodologies while nurturing our clients through this period of great transformation. We’re continually reinventing how we deliver optimum service to proactively help meet future challenges, and to meet clients where they are.”

Over these last four decades, Darnell has amassed extensive experience, which proves useful in guiding his clients through both opportunistic and volatile markets. “We take great pride in being there for our clients. It’s one of the key elements of our approach to service. Clients view our team as a bridge over “changing waters.”

Darnell attributes much of his success to giving back. In recent years, he continues to focus his attention on programs that work to uplift the next generation, specifically vocational and basic financial education for students. “Much of the required teaching and mentoring needs to take place over a long period of time, and you have to meet people where they are, not where they should be. What I’ve seen is that when we solve for the human condition, we solve for the business condition, too. Ultimately, I owe my success to the four pillars I’ve built my practice on: Faith, Family, Community, and Clients.”