Pike Place Partners at Morgan Stanley

I'm Michael Garbooshian, and I've been fortunate to live life from coast to coast, shaped by a diverse range of experiences and passions.

My story began in the New York metropolitan area in New Jersey, but my family relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area during high school. In my early years, I embraced the value of hard work, spending my summers mowing lawns and braving the winter cold to shovel snow, all in pursuit of a few extra dollars.

My appetite for knowledge led me to University of California at Davis, where I graduated with a major in political science, while also being a student-athlete on the Aggie baseball team. My academic and athletic pursuits laid a strong foundation for my future endeavors.

After exploring the sports administration industry in Wichita, KS, I embarked on a new chapter in Seattle, initially working in the computer hardware industry. However, destiny had other plans. My father asked me to work for his national steel distribution company, and how do you turn that down? Ultimately, however, I knew my true calling was in the world of finance.

The pivotal moment came in the mid 90's when I responded to a classified ad in the Sunday Seattle Times, leading me to the Merrill Lynch office in Bellevue, Washington. There, I began my career in financial advisory services.

In the early 2000's, I made a leap to Smith Barney in Seattle, where I quickly recognized the unique entrepreneurial spirit of the organization. It was also where I met my future wife, Shanna, who was the Branch Operations Manager. Today, we are proud to be at Pike Place Partners, a team within Morgan Stanley that we co-founded with other advisors in 2016.

In an effort to continue to cultivate a proficiency in finance, I earned my Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) designation from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. This achievement continues to pay dividends by expanding my expertise in financial management.

My personal life is equally fulfilling. Shanna and I, along with our daughter Emily, call Sammamish, Washington, our home. We are a tight-knit family, often bonding over golf, where I happily loop for the ladies on local courses. I can proudly claim that my golf game has never been better.

Beyond the greens, I am an avid adventurer, having climbed Mount Rainier four times and been lucky to reach the summit on three occasions. I appreciate the beauty of the Pacific Northwest through hiking and savor the fan experiences at Kraken hockey and Mariners’ baseball games.

My journey has been one of growth, family, and passion for finance. As a Managing Director and a founding partner of Pike Place Partners, my mission is clear: to be everything to our clients, enabling them to make a difference in the lives and causes they care about. It's a path I tread with dedication and enthusiasm, embracing each new challenge as an opportunity for growth, impact and leadership.

I'm Seth Rapkin and I am passionate about providing leadership to our clients, creating impact in their lives and helping them to achieve their life goals. As I think about my background and who I am, there have been a few consistent themes that encapsulate my story: my love for people, family and sports.

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia and moved around a reasonable amount in my early life from Atlanta to Paris and then onto the Northeast with stops in New York and Connecticut. My dad worked for IBM which in internal circles jokingly stood for "I've Been Moved". We settled in a small town on the coast of Connecticut where I spent the most formidable years of my youth.

Early in my life, I fell in love with sports. I loved to both play and root… that love has continued to this day. In high school, I ended up focusing on tennis & basketball. Basketball was my favorite but I was a better tennis player, finishing my senior year as an All State performer.

Not only did I work hard at my athletic pursuits, I also entered the traditional work world at age fifteen, starting at a local video store and then transitioning to a tennis club a few towns over, when I got my driver's license. Beginning work at an early age, helped me to realize my love for being with and helping people. As a senior in high school, I was voted "Most Outgoing", an award I still try to live up to!

I wanted to play sports in college and matriculated to The University of Washington with hopes of continuing my tennis career. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that I wasn't quite good enough for division one college tennis so my career ended early my freshman year. With my love for people, I joined a fraternity and subsequently was voted in as Social Chairman. It was a tremendously fun time in my life as I got to take center stage in every social element of college life.

While my early college life was very fun, I lacked real direction. That all changed in the spring of my sophomore year, when I met my now wife almost 25 years, Jenifer. Wanting to start a life with her helped to create direction for me and her father-in-law, Orrin, helped me to understand what I could achieve with hard work and generosity, two staples of who I am today.

The spring of my junior year, I lucked into an opportunity as an intern with Morgan Stanley, in the Seattle office. I knew nothing about wealth management but quickly grew to love watching the advisors I worked for connecting and creating impact in their clients lives. While I didn't grow up locally in Seattle, and lacked any real network, I wanted to give the industry a try.

Candidly… It was a very hard and challenging road. While working to build a successful career in wealth management, Jenifer and I also were incredibly lucky to have two wonderful kids, Kailee and Noah. As you can imagine, with my love of people, family is core to who I am and I can't imagine my life without them. They were and are a big driver of the success I have had to date.

While it seems hard to believe, I have now been with Morgan Stanley for over 25 years and am a founding member of The Pike Place Partners. As a team, we are solely focused on being everything to our clients so they can, in turn, be everything to the people and causes most important to them.

I am Matt Hersch and I am passionate about helping our clients achieve what they may not even have known to be possible, while making a positive impact in the world. But before I tell you more about what I do, let me tell you a little bit about who I am.

I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, in the not so great part of town. My parents worked hard to provide for me and my brother. While we always knew we would have all that we need, we didn't have a lot of extras. From a very young age, I learned the value of hard work and perseverance. I started out mowing lawns, crushing cans, delivering newspapers, and working on a Christmas tree lot. Finally, when I was fifteen, I got my first real job at a lumber yard. While I learned a tremendous amount while working there, I hated being soaking wet out in the rain, and I knew I wanted something better, something different.

I decided that college was my way out of this life (and the rain). That may seem obvious, however only about half of my freshman class graduated high school and a much smaller percentage went on to college. However, I was one of the few who decided to take that path. I was determined to make something of myself, I just wasn’t sure what that would be.

I attended Western Washington University, where I received a degree in finance. I felt that with this degree and my perseverance, it would put me on a faster track to financial success. I just had to figure out how. I started as an intern at Smith Barney days after graduating and determined right then that I was going to be in this business. Over time I have worked my way through the ranks to become an Executive Director and one of the founding members of the Pike Place Partners.

When I first started, this business was a lot different and not that interesting to me. It did however, promise that with hard work and dedication, I would be on that fast track, which was enough to keep me engaged. Early on, the focus was almost entirely about portfolios and performance. I knew then, that while I could build a portfolio that fit the clients' needs, I have little, if any, control over the outcome. Over time, this industry has changed and so have I.
Now, much of my time is spent helping clients in areas reaching far beyond the portfolio. I focus on the levers that I believe can help to make a transformative difference in the lives of our clients. I focus on what our clients truly want to accomplish and work with their other professional advisors to help make it a reality. In short, I spend my days striving to be everything to our clients, so they can be everything to the people counting on them.

Along this journey, I met my wife Alissa, who is also an Financial Advisor on the PikePlacePartners. We met at work many years ago, were married, and now that we have two amazing kiddos, Blakely and Beckham. These two are our pride and joy and we love to spend time with them and watch them grow. Having a family has taught me there is so much more to life than just work. It is about family, friends, and being there for each other in the good times, as well as the tougher moments.

This realization has changed my outlook on the work that I do. I am not just another advisor providing advice, but rather a leader providing strength and leadership to our clients when they truly need it the most. I am proud of what I do, and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve them.

This is my personal story, and this is why I love being a Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley.

Alissa graduated from Santa Clara University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and a Minor in Business. She started working with Morgan Stanley and its predecessors in 1998 as an intern and joined the firm full time in 2005. Alissa has completed Morgan Stanley’s Portfolio Management Training to receive the Portfolio Management Director designation, the US SIF Foundation Course, “Fundamentals of Sustainable & Responsible Investment,” the Morgan Stanley’s Institute of Family Wealth Management course receiving the Family Wealth Advisor designation, and has received the firm’s Financial Planning Specialist designation. Alissa is recognized on Forbes April 2020 Top Women Wealth Advisors. As an advisor she takes care in developing strategies to help maintain a level of consistency through all market cycles.

Coupling her passion for helping others and promoting women, Alissa has been an active member of the Washington Women’s Foundation since 2010 co-leading Pooled Grant Committees and Impact Assessment Committees. She is active with The Women’s Funding Alliance and has spent time volunteering with The Seattle International Foundation.

Alissa is a Seattle native and former Junior Olympic downhill ski racer. She is still an avid skier, enjoys cheering on the Seattle Sounders and has a passion for travel. With her husband, Matt, and daughter, Blakely, she enjoys the Pacific Northwest while biking, hiking and golfing.

2020,2022 Forbes America's Top Women Wealth Advisors & Forbes Top Women Wealth Advisors Best-In- State (formerly referred to as Forbes Top Women Wealth Advisors, Forbes America's Top Women Wealth Advisors)
Source: Forbes.com (Awarded 2020,2022). Data compiled by SHOOK Research LLC based on 12-month time period concluding in Sept of year prior to the issuance of the award.

2018, 2019, 2020 Forbes America’s Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors & Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors Best-in-State (formerly referred to as Forbes America's Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors, Forbes Top 1,000 Next-Gen Wealth Advisors, Forbes Top 500 Next Generation Wealth Advisors)
Source: Forbes.com (Awarded 2018, 2019, 2020). Data compiled by SHOOK Research LLC based on 12-month period concluding in Mar of the year the award was issued.

2018-2020 Working Mother Magazine & SHOOK Research's Top Wealth Advisor Moms
Source: Workingmother.com (Awarded October 2018-2020). Data compiled by SHOOK Research LLC based on 12-month period concluding in Mar of the year the award was given.

2015-2021 Five Star Wealth Manager Award
Source: fivestarprofessional.com (Awarded 2015-2021) The award was determined based on an evaluation process conducted by Five-Star Professional based on objective criteria. The award was not based on a specific time period.

I'm Jack Karasky, and I take pride in being different.

I grew up in the Bay Area, but decided to trade the sunny skies of California for the Pacific Northwest. I was originally drawn to Seattle to attend the University of Washington because I wanted to experience living in a different part of the country than where I had grown up. Originally enrolling as a history major, I quickly realized studying history would make a far better hobby than career. I thought back to my other favorite classes in high school which were statistics and economics, slammed them together, and decided to pursue a finance degree.

Once I started my major, I realized that I would need something different to stand out; many of my peers were studying finance, but almost nobody was studying both finance and accounting. I decided to take the required nine extra accounting classes to pursue a double major because it would make me different. It sounded easy at the time, I swear.

After school, I landed at job at Starbucks in corporate finance. I loved working for an iconic brand where all of my friends and family could relate to the business as customers. I had great mentors, a strong personal brand, and a promising career path. However, I always knew that the corporate ladder was not for me. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs and I always envisioned my future in a smaller, more agile enterprise.

After interning for the Pike Place Partners in college, the team reached out two years into my time at Starbucks to see if I had an interest in making a career change. Candidly, I was skeptical. I never wanted a cookie-cutter career and wealth management felt like the exact opposite of an entrepreneurial endeavor. However, I was surprised as the team unpacked the vision of what they saw as the future of the industry.

They described why the days of the "investment advisor" are numbered, and how this role can be so much more. Striving to be everything to a select group of clients so they can be everything to the people counting on them was the new job description, and I was hooked. Fast forward to the present, and I’m helping lead a team that’s built on being unique.

One of the ways I’ve helped shape the team into being different is through Founder Advisory Services. Recognizing that the traditional industry approach has often underserved modern entrepreneurs, we decided to build a novel discipline of financial planning that is specific to startup founders and the challenges that they face. My role involves working closely with these founders, helping them keep their personal interests aligned with those of their company as it grows and evolves over time. This distinctive approach has enabled me to influence our clients on a scale far beyond what I initially believed possible, all while also providing me with the entrepreneurial career I've always envisioned for myself.

That’s why I’m happy to be here doing this work. I believe in being different and truly making an impact.

Shanna has been at Morgan Stanley and its predecessors since 1987. Prior to joining our team she spent over 20 years in management at Morgan Stanley. As a Senior Registered Associate, she acts as a client support liaison handling administrative duties ranging from IRA distributions to client account updates.

Shanna attended Northern Arizona University. She currently holds her Series 7, 9/10, 65, 63, and Washington State Insurance licenses.

Shanna lives in Issaquah with daughter Emily and husband, Michael.  In her spare time she enjoys watching her daughter play soccer, basketball, and participating in Girl Scouts events. She also enjoys playing golf and traveling.

Jennifer plays an integral role in the day to day operations of the team and providing exceptional client service is her number one priority. She has been with Morgan Stanley since 2005 and has 18 years of industry experience. Jennifer received her B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Washington in 1998 and holds her Series 7, 63, 65 securities licenses.

Jennifer resides in Issaquah with her husband, Andy, and their son, Jackson. She enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, and snowboarding.

Wealth Management Analyst Cody Chen is a former Pike Place Partners intern, joining the team full-time after earning a Bachelor's degree in Finance Business Administration from the University of Washington in June 2018.

Tech savvy, detail-oriented, and creative, Cody is responsible for everything from preparing meeting collateral and maintaining database information, to building data visualizations and shaping the Pike Place Partner’s aesthetic. He holds the Series 7 and 66 licenses.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan but raised in Washington State, Cody enjoys fitness, baking, and painting when not enjoying his beautiful neighborhood of Queen Anne.

Noah was born in Seattle and has lived in the Northwest his whole life. He graduated from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business with a Finance degree. Noah was also a member of the UW baseball team, including being on the first team in school history to advance to the College World Series in 2018. He is now looking forward to applying the skills and experiences he has accumulated from his athletic career to his role as a Registered Associate with Pike Place Partners. Noah lives on Mercer Island and in his free time he enjoys playing and watching sports, cooking, and discovering new music.

Melia was born and raised in Mukilteo, WA. She graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in Finance Business Administration and started her career at PlanMember Financial Corporation in Carpinteria, California. She came back to the Pacific Northwest to be closer to family and enjoy the great outdoors. In her spare time, she loves reading, spending time with friends and trying new restaurants. Melia is also passionate about traveling and cooking.