A second career, built on the first.

My name is Zack Alexander. I run a small, independent California fiduciary practice based in Napa.

For twenty years before this, I taught mathematics — classroom, AP-level, eventually department head. Teaching is, more than anything else, the work of explaining hard things clearly to people who are anxious about whether they can handle them. That turns out to be most of fiduciary practice too.

I came to this profession the long way around. After teaching, I completed an MBA and started looking for second-career work that combined administrative discipline, financial responsibility, and the kind of one-to-one human contact I had spent two decades in. A friend pointed me at California's Licensed Professional Fiduciary credential. I sat the exam, passed it, and joined an established Walnut Creek fiduciary practice for a year and a half — learning trust administration, conservatorship work, and the texture of the families this profession serves.

Why Napa Valley Fiduciary

I left to build something deliberately small. The pattern I kept noticing in the field: when assets get large or families get complicated, the work moves to a bank trust department or a regional firm, and the client loses the personal relationship that brought them there in the first place. I wanted to build a practice that could stay personal at scale — and stay genuinely independent of the institutions that would otherwise own the assets.

The brand reflects the place. Napa is where I live, where the courthouse is, where the attorneys and CPAs I work with practice, and where the families I serve have built their lives. Local matters in this work in a way it doesn't always elsewhere — I show up to the hospital, to the house, to the probate court, to the planning meeting.

How I work with other professionals

The single most important thing to know, especially if you are a financial advisor, attorney, or CPA reading this: I commit not to move client assets. When you refer a client to me, the AUM stays where it is, the family relationship stays with you, and I administer the fiduciary side from where the assets already live. My fees come from the fiduciary work.

This is the opposite of the bank-trust pattern, and it is deliberate. I built the practice this way because the alternative — the pattern where assets migrate every time a client ages into needing a fiduciary — serves no one but the institution that captures them.

Other work

I also run Laurel Tree Prep, an exam-prep publishing company that produces study materials for professional licensing exams — including the California Professional Fiduciary licensure exam (the one I sat to enter this profession). Materials are available at CAFiduciaryPrep.com and on Amazon. The work helps keep me current on the rules and regulations that govern California fiduciary practice, which turns out to be a useful side effect.

Outside the practice

I live in Napa, am an active church member and volunteer, and spend most weekends with my wife Cara, who is a hospital social worker. Together we have spent enough time around end-of-life care to take this work seriously and personally.