About

Alessandro (Sandro) D'Agaro, CFA

I built my own financial foundation without a family playbook. No one taught me how to invest, how to think about risk, or how to avoid the emotional mistakes that cost real money. I made things work. But I also made mistakes that better guidance would have prevented.

I know what it feels like to earn more than your parents did and have no idea what to do with it. I know the gap between knowing you should have a plan and actually having one. I built D'Agaro Financial Advisory for people in that position: first-generation wealth builders who want structure and clarity without the pressure or the pretense.

What twenty years of investment research taught me

I spent two decades as a buy-side equity analyst at UBS Global Asset Management and Thrivent Asset Management, holding the Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) designation and covering companies across industries and market capitalizations. The work meant building a financial model and an investment thesis, piece by piece, then making a call that put real money behind it.

You learn everything you can about a company. But the job is not knowing everything. The job is identifying the two or three things that will actually determine whether the investment works. Everything else is context. If you spend your time on the wrong variables, you can be the most thorough analyst in the room and still miss the call.

Financial planning works the same way. You can track every $5 coffee and still miss that your insurance, housing, or tax structure is the thing that determines whether you reach your goals. My job is to find the variables that actually matter for your plan, pressure-test them, and build the structure around those.

Good decisions are made with incomplete information, and good plans have to adapt when the facts change. You make the best decision you can, then revisit it when the facts warrant it.

The Navy came first

My path here was not straight. I studied Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), served as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy and later in the intelligence community, and earned my MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The submarine service stays with me. On a submarine you own your responsibilities completely. If something goes wrong, you do not look for someone to blame. You figure out what happened, without ego, and you fix it. The boat's systems are designed with redundancy and margins of safety so that no single failure becomes a catastrophe. And when things do go wrong, they tend to happen fast and without warning, which means the most important skill is the ability to stay calm, take a breath, and work the problem before you act.

I think about client work the same way. Build the structure with margins. Own the process. When something changes, do not react. Understand it first.

Outside the office

In 2025, I ran my first marathon: the 50th anniversary Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. I finished under my five-hour goal. It will probably be my only marathon. One was the point.

I have worked out every day for almost two years. I collect music the way some people collect books. Around 12,000 albums at last count, and I am not slowing down. My wife and I have four grown kids scattered in various directions, and we spend as much time as we can getting to wherever they are, especially if it involves a flight back to Italy.

Our Values