One of the most meaningful aspects of Family Office Access is the ability to bring visibility to work that matters while connecting members with families and investors who share similar values and priorities.
We are featuring Melissa Blettner, CEO of Boyd Hollow Resorts, a leader in developing purpose-driven hospitality and immersive experiences designed to foster connection, transformation, and lasting impact.
Through projects like the Bokee’s Trek Experience and future wellbeing retreats, Melissa is creating environments where people can step away from the pace of everyday life and reconnect with themselves, with others, and with a deeper sense of purpose. Her work sits at the intersection of experience, capital, and community, offering a different lens on how relationships form and are sustained.
A Shift in How Families Engage with Capital
As wealth continues to transition across generations, many Family Offices are placing greater emphasis on aligning capital with purpose, legacy, and long-term vision. This shift is influencing not only how families invest, but how they define impact and measure success.
Family Offices and their advisors are increasingly engaging across three key areas:
- Purpose-driven investment, where capital is aligned with both return and impact
- Legacy and generational alignment, ensuring values carry forward across generations
- Strategic relationships, building trusted networks that create access to the right opportunities
A Relationship-First Approach
Melissa’s work naturally aligns with this evolution. Rather than creating transactional environments, she is designing spaces where relationships can develop more organically, often becoming the foundation for long-term collaboration.
Melissa’s approach within Family Office Access reflects the same philosophy.
She leads with presence. With curiosity. With a genuine interest in understanding others before seeking to be understood. Through her involvement, she has focused on creating value within the community by collaborating with other members, contributing to conversations on generational wealth transition, and building relationships with families and advisors aligned on both vision and purpose.
This approach speaks to a broader truth in today’s capital environment: the strongest opportunities are rarely built in a single conversation. They are developed over time through consistency, trust, and shared values.
A Perspective Shaped by Experience
As Melissa shares:
“Family Office Access is more than a network. It is a community built on relationships. When you take the time to connect, contribute, and truly understand others, the right opportunities naturally follow.”
This mindset is reflected not only in how she engages but in what she is building.
Through Boyd Hollow Resorts, Melissa continues to connect with investors, families, and partners who are seeking more than financial return. They are looking for alignment. For meaning. For opportunities that reflect who they are and what they value.
What’s Ahead
In support of this work, Melissa is also collaborating with fellow Family Office Access members on a generational wealth transition e-book, bringing together insights, strategies, and perspectives to help families navigate the evolving landscape of legacy, purpose, and capital.
The initiative reflects the same philosophy that guides her broader approach: lead with value, build relationships, and create something meaningful together.
As her work continues to evolve, so too do the conversations forming around it—ones grounded not just in capital, but in connection, intention, and long-term impact.
The challenge
Before using Family Office Access (FOA), the team was spending too much time building prospect lists and not enough time talking with advisors and families. There wasn’t a single, reliable place for up-to-date Family Office contacts, so hours went into list creation instead of conversations.
“We were living in spreadsheets, CRM exports, personal networks, and Sales Navigator,” says Matthew Bennetter, Associate Director, Partnerships, leafplanner. “It made it hard to identify the right Family Offices that would actually benefit from leafplanner. Hours went into list building instead of conversations.”
What changed with FOA
When leafplanner adopted Family Office Access, the workflow shifted from manual prospecting to targeted discovery. The team now starts with FOA’s filters to focus on the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, plus a few other markets where families are actively planning transitions, which is leafplanner’s sweet spot.
They look for multi-asset, private equity, venture, and impact investors and use check size (often $5M to $25M) as a proxy for planning complexity. Saved searches live inside FOA and refresh as new offices are added. Lists export straight into HubSpot sequences, and FOA profile notes help the team tailor each first touch.
“We combined geography and sector into saved searches that continuously surface ideal prospects,” Matthew says. “Then we take FOA’s context to personalize how we talk about centralizing information, streamlining planning, and supporting advisors.”
The result: more fit, more speed
The payoff showed up quickly. leafplanner now saves hours each week on manual research and reaches about three times more qualified Family Offices per campaign. Meetings are with the right decision makers, and the pipeline moves from introduction to diligence to contract faster.
A recent example: FOA surfaced a Midwestern Single Family Office that was explicitly looking for organizational planning tools, an exact match for leafplanner’s use case.
“FOA gives us back time,” Matthew says. “And the time we win back turns into better conversations.”
Founder perspective
“I thought you couldn’t be better prepared than I was; a trained lawyer who took my father’s estate-planning class in law school, with 18 months alongside him before he passed away.
I was wrong.
I knew the entity and deal names and even some of the people, but context was missing, and without context it’s hard to make intelligent decisions.
- Why did we have these structures?
- Who did we do these deals with, and why?
- Who did my dad trust, and who didn’t?
So much history and detail never shows up on a balance sheet or in the documents. That led me to build our family’s first ‘owner’s manual,’ and later to build leafplanner to help all families. That experience still guides our product decisions. We design for clarity, context, and decision-readiness.”
— Josh Kanter, Founder & CEO, leafplanner
Beyond data: education and community
leafplanner also leaned into FOA’s MasterClass to show, not just tell. The session gave the team trusted visibility with Family Offices and advisors while grounding the conversation in real problems and practical workflows. The combination of focused targeting and credible education helped leafplanner reduce friction, increase trust, and earn time with the right people.
“Danielle’s MasterClass sessions are so helpful. She brings a range of expertise to the table to talk about issues that affect all of us in the Family Office world; family members, family-office staff, and advisors. I take something away from every session I’ve been fortunate enough to listen to.”
— Josh Kanter
How leafplanner works with FOA today
Matthew’s advice for new FOA users is simple: start tight, then scale.
FOA is the front door to outreach. Saved searches set the scope. Exports keep the CRM clean. Notes shape the message. Community touchpoints, MasterClass, and Lunch & Learns, open the door to warmer follow-ups.
“Build smart saved searches and pair them with a clear, differentiated message. Begin with your city or state, learn fast, and expand from there.”
About Leafplanner
leafplanner is a secure digital platform that helps ultra-high-net-worth families, family offices, and multi-generational families organize and centralize their most important wealth, legal, and legacy information. It streamlines collaboration with family members and advisors, highlights gaps in planning, and ensures smooth continuity across generations. leafplanner is trusted by hundreds of the world’s most successful families.
General inquiries: leafplanner.com/contact or hello@leafplanner.com
About Family Office Access
Family Office Access helps teams find aligned Family Offices quickly and start better conversations through targeted data, saved searches, exportable lists, profile context, and a member community that values practical education over pitches.
Cognito Therapeutics is a clinical-stage neurotechnology company pioneering a non-invasive therapy to slow neurodegeneration and preserve cognitive function in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The company’s approach, grounded in over 30 years of neuroscience research from MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, uses precise visual and auditory stimulation to engage the brain’s natural rhythms—offering the potential to shift the treatment paradigm for millions of patients worldwide.
Following promising outcomes from Phase 2 trials and an Open Label Extension, Cognito is now nearing completion of enrollment for a pivotal Phase 3 trial, with data expected in summer 2026. The company’s at-home therapy has been granted Breakthrough Device designation by the FDA and is backed by a world-class Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, including Nobel Laureates.
The Challenge
As Cognito entered its next phase of growth, the leadership team began preparing for a $110M Series C fundraising round. With $60M already committed by existing investors, the company sought to broaden its base by engaging new mission-aligned Family Offices.
Unlike institutional capital, Family Office capital often moves through trusted relationships and requires more personalized outreach. Cognito needed a way to identify these decision-makers and engage them efficiently without losing the nuance of its story.
The Solution: Using Family Office Access to Target and Connect
Christian Howell, Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Worthy, Chief Business & Financial Officer, turned to Family Office Access to accelerate this effort. The platform’s database of over 5,000 global Family Offices offered a rich foundation—but it was the strategic support, advanced filters, and intuitive tools that helped the Cognito team take things further.
Through a one-on-one strategy session with our team, Steve explored how to:
- Identify Family Offices that had shown prior interest in healthtech, medical devices, and neuroscience
- Use the Roadmap & Investment Glossary to better understand available filters and refine targeting
- Export lists for customized outreach (available to annual subscribers)
- Submit research requests for highly specific investor profiles
“The Family Office Access platform is robust and incredibly user-friendly. Their many filters and AI-enabled search features help turn an otherwise manual and tedious web-based search process into an intuitive exploration of Family Offices you believe best fit your business’ profile. This, plus the added benefit of getting ongoing support from Danielle and her stellar team, results in the perfect 1-2 punch for anyone looking to systematically access Family Office decision makers.”
— Steve Worthy, Chief Business & Financial Officer, Cognito Therapeutics
“Our goal is to align with partners who not only understand the science, but who believe in supporting bold solutions with long-term impact. Family Office Access is helping us bridge that gap with tools that bring clarity and focus to our investor engagement.”
— Christian Howell, Chief Executive Officer, Cognito Therapeutics
Looking Ahead
As Cognito continues to advance its Phase 3 clinical trial and raise capital for its next chapter, Family Office Access will remain a key resource in their outreach strategy. The combination of high-quality data and human-centered support has helped the Cognito team align with investors who understand both the scientific rigor and mission-driven purpose behind their work.
To learn more about Cognito Therapeutics, visit www.cognitotx.com.
Meticulous. Venerable. Influential.
These are just a few of the words that those who know Ian Gragtmans and Min Suh say have characterized the founders of Steady Capital on their multi-decade commercial real estate (CRE) odyssey. With a comprehensive depth of knowledge in the North American industrial, multi-family, land assembly, value-add, and redevelopment real estate markets, Ian and Min (founders) understand the complexities they involve and how to execute the strategies critical to creating very healthy returns for their investors.
Their strategic foresight and meticulous execution, especially evident in industrial and multi-family projects, have created a consistent track record of positive outcomes on capital invested, including avoiding the impacts of the recent interest hikes and the ramifications that followed.
A Visionary Approach: The Genesis of Steady Capital
Steady Capital is at the heart of their vision and drive; a venture designed to harness the dynamic shifts in CRE and uncover generational investment opportunities. They launched Steady Capital amidst seismic changes in interest rates and market conditions, positioning it as an agile entity, free from legacy constraints and with the agility and speed to capitalize on U.S.-based institutional-class real estate strategies.
At the core of Steady Capital lies a meticulous examination of real estate dynamics. This analysis carefully scrutinizes macroeconomic environments, business cycle directions, and local market conditions in ways that clarify and accelerate the ability to identify and act on investment opportunities.
A Strategic Partnership: The Family Office Access
The founders have always understood the vital role that strategic partnerships play when it comes to their robust deal flow and achieving superior risk-adjusted returns. Their strategic utilization of the Family Office Access (FOA) platform uniquely positioned Steady Capital to forge substantive partnerships with intelligent investors, including co-general partners (Co-GPs) sourced through FOA.
By leveraging the platform’s aggregation of like-minded investor information, Steady Capital optimizes its capital stack with partners who share a keen insight and solid moral grounding in investment practices, ultimately strengthening its position in the market.
A Forward-Thinking Venture: Projects That Matter
Yet another distinctive aspect of Steady Capital is the spearheading of projects that are ambitious and reflect its strategic market positioning. In Miami, Florida, Steady Capital is invested in a significant multifamily development adjacent to the Jackson Health District, which will deliver 380 units catering to the burgeoning demand in one of the nation’s largest health districts.
In Columbia, South Carolina, a new venture aims to build upwards of 385 multifamily units, capitalizing on the regional economic boom fueled by multinational investments in the region, such as that of Volkswagen Group Projects like these, as well as in-the-works ventures in New York City and Texas that include a mix of commercial and residential properties, highlight Steady Capital’s proactive approach to investing in high-growth areas.
A Distinctive Perspective: Seeing Challenge as Opportunity
While some would approach the recent volatility in the capital landscape with hesitance and apprehension, Steady Capital sees the challenges as a breeding ground for massive opportunities. Moving forward by embracing the turmoil, Steady Capital is capitalizing on the current and massive transfer of wealth from weakened hands to those of strength and resilience.
By utilizing selective investment approaches focusing on high-potential properties in strategically identified locations, Steady Capital can maximize its returns while minimizing risk. This approach, coupled with the anticipation of a continuing wealth transfer represents generational opportunities to skilled investors and delineates a bright trajectory for the future when it comes to navigating market uncertainties.
A Confident Future: There’s No Substitute for Experience
When it comes to navigating markets through adversity, experience is paramount. Decades of experience dating back to the early ’90s provide the necessary guidance and execution prowess to take advantage of market uncertainties.
Perseverance, integrity, and relationship-building form the ethos at Steady Capital and stand at the core of its strategies, enabling it to adeptly navigate the cycles of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that hinder others. This uniquely positions the founders to explore the burgeoning opportunities with a clean slate unburdened by past investments and a sharp eye on the horizon.
Insightful Leadership: The Essence of Innovation and Resilience
Steady Capital’s activity and investments in the CRE market epitomize the essence of strategic innovation and resilience and provide insightful leadership grounded in decades of experience. A forward-looking vision has positioned Steady Capital as a pivotal player that’s poised for continued growth and success.
As the firm actively seeks out intelligent investors to join its prosperity and commitment to navigating the complexities of the market with agility and integrity, Ian and Min are there to guide and will continue to be regarded as a beacon of stability and potential in the fluctuating real estate landscape.
With a three-pronged approach focused on real estate, agriculture, and Africa’s booming tech sector, Verdant Frontiers works to create sustainable, life-changing jobs while generating compelling investment returns.
Verdant Frontiers recently turned to Family Office Access to help expand its fundraising base and improve fundraising efficiency.
Successful Outcomes
- Improving fundraising efficiency by allowing Verdant to target investors who have expressed interest in its offerings
- Establishing stronger and more significant partner relationships to expand Verdant’s reach to family offices
“We have investment opportunities where investors don’t have to choose between making a life-changing impact and getting financial returns. A lot of people see those as mutually exclusive … we think that the best investments in the best businesses are both.”
Scott Friesen, Founder and CEO of Verdant Frontiers
The Client: Verdant Frontiers
Verdant Frontiers aims to become the Berkshire Hathaway of Africa, with three areas of focus: real estate, agriculture, and technology
Verdant Frontiers began its work in Africa after the U.S. Embassy identified a pressing need for high-security African housing from both a seismic and a safety perspective. Within just a few years, Verdant Frontiers filled this gap by developing a 90-unit compound in Kenya and a 112-unit compound in Ethiopia.
Verdant Frontiers also has acquired two 1000+ acre citrus and avocado farms with a goal of building a portfolio of commercial farms in Africa growing citrus, avocado, and nuts. Over the next decade, Verdant Frontiers hopes to create 30,000 orchard jobs and grow this portfolio to a $1 billion value.
Finally, Verdant Frontiers has deployed a three-prong approach to participate in Africa’s expanding FinTech industry.
- Operating a FinTech venture capital fund
- Operating a startup studio to develop technology to fill gaps in the market
- Acquiring a financial institution to create a middle-class mortgage market
This multifaceted model allows Verdant Frontiers to fully immerse itself in the African industry, creating jobs and generating value for investors.
The Challenge: Improving Efficiency While Continuing Expansion
After raising more than $140 million from investors, Verdant Frontiers found its fundraising and outreach processes were becoming more time-consuming.
And with the increased public interest in social impact investing, Verdant Frontiers knew that to move to the next level, it needed to streamline.
This meant targeting family offices instead of just individual investors to provide a broader distribution of opportunities and create new partner relationships.
The Solution: Joining the Family Office Ecosystem
Family Office Access quickly connected Verdant Frontiers to other service partners that were already part of the Family Office Access “ecosystem.” With one partner company regularly pitching to family offices, and another specializing in family office digital marketing, these connections have already laid the groundwork for tangible rewards.
One unique benefit Verdant Frontiers quickly realized was that Family Office Access’s data allowed the company to shift from “cold pitching” to marketing its unique investments to those who have expressed interest.
According to Scott Friesen, Co-Founder at Verdant Frontiers, “the prospecting comes through our network of relationships, but you just never know, what’s a good fit? Who is interested in investing in Africa? And so, being able to filter the list [of family offices] and have people that have a stated interest in investing in a particular region is really helpful.”
Verdant Frontiers also appreciated getting a detailed list of contacts within each family office. Not only did Family Office Access provide Verdant Frontiers with basic office demographics like assets under management and focus areas, but it also allowed the company to review family office contacts to see whether any existing connection points were available. This information helped Verdant Frontiers create relationships with these offices more organically—a good starting point for a long-lasting partnership.
While Verdant Frontiers partnered with Family Office Access only recently, its founders remain confident that the relationships they’re building now will help them push their innovative company into the next frontier of social impact investing.
In Summary
Verdant Frontiers reached out to Family Office Access with a unique problem—it had raised capital from so many individual investors that its outreach process was becoming less and less efficient. By working with Family Office Access, Verdant Frontiers was able to target more family offices and target family offices that have a specific interest in the investments that Verdant Frontiers offers. This strategy will likely allow the company to raise more capital without pitching to more clients.
If you’d like to learn more about Family Office Access and how your company can benefit from its well-researched client lists, please contact us today. Our services are uniquely tailored to each partner’s needs, and we’ll work with you to identify your goals and help you achieve them.
Worth Avenue Yachts is a premier yacht brokerage firm that goes beyond selling and listing boats.
“One of the other things that we do as yacht brokers is that we act as consultants,” explains William Baldwin, broker.
In addition to managing luxury yacht listings, the company also facilitates charters and new yacht construction.
“We also advise comps and other market analyses to price yachts correctly and make informed consultations. This helps us coordinate surveys, sales agreements, and closing documents.”
With yacht prices starting in the low seven figures, these luxury seacrafts require an incredibly targeted strategy that demands heavy networking among high-wealth individuals. Baldwin quickly discovered that he needed a faster, more efficient method for identifying prospects across the country.
Below, we discuss how Family Office Access stepped in to help Baldwin identify and build the connections he needed.
Positive Outcomes
- Worth Avenue Yachts secured a number of listings using Family Office Data
- Family Office Access helped Worth Avenue Yachts streamline its outreach by providing quick and immediate access to a broader network of high net worth individuals
- When contacting family offices, Worth Avenue Yachts was able to craft a personal and more effective outreach with data from Family Office Access
- Family Office Access enabled Worth Avenue Yachts to better leverage their internal marketing data to identify active Yacht Club members within the Family Office community to better contextualize new relationships
“The contacts I made through Family Office Access by far paid off more than contacts I made through cold calls.”
William Baldwin
The Challenge: Identifying Prospective Customers
The yacht brokerage business, just like any other ultra-high-end real estate brokerage, is all about your contacts.
When a family office wants to purchase or charter a yacht, it’s not by browsing the internet—it’s by leaning on its connections and talking to trusted peers to find the right vendor.
Knowing that personal connections were key to these yacht transactions, Baldwin felt his cold calling and generic research weren’t enough.
He had difficulty gauging potential customers’ interest before reaching out, wasting time and energy. And when he did reach out, he couldn’t access the right information to make a key personal connection.
Furthermore, because family offices tend to keep low profiles, Baldwin found himself reaching out on less formal channels, like social media, which he says isn’t necessarily where his target audience typically conducts business.
The Solution: Immediate Access to Family Office Lists
Clients like Baldwin and others in the luxury service market have found Family Office Access’s contact lists incredibly valuable.
Baldwin was able to start his research with a quick search in the database for the term “yacht,” bringing up family offices with an interest in boating.
“There are a lot of fund managers and members of family offices that are very interested and yachting,” said Baldwin.
The platform’s search capability eliminated the need for the “spray and pray” approach that static and less detailed lists encourage. No one enjoys putting others on the defense from irrelevant cold calling, so the invaluable data of these family offices’ interests made outreach better received.
With family offices readily providing referrals to each other, Family Office Access’s contact lists allowed Baldwin to make personal connections quickly and significantly expand his universe of potential clients and customers.
More specifically, our family office data can be filtered by assets under management, allowing Baldwin to target only those with sufficient levels of wealth to support a yacht purchase or charter.
Generally, $100 million is the baseline AUM threshold for single-family offices, while multifamily offices may manage several families’ assets to allow them to reach that $100 million threshold. By focusing on those family offices at the top of the AUM list, Baldwin can ensure that his marketing efforts are landing at their intended targets, freeing up his time to focus on relationship-building instead of scattershot messaging.
The Result: A Fast-Growing Network of Clients
“You’d think that I’d only find potential clients in New York or Newport, but I made a great connection in Chicago and the Midwest through Family Office Access,” said Baldwin.
Once Baldwin combined the family office data provided by Family Office Access with his own marketing data, he discovered something interesting—at least a dozen of his new family office connections were also yacht club members. This revelation allowed him to deepen and better contextualize these relationships, as well as target a new industry segment.
Another interesting—and unexpected—discovery was the multiple levels of connection that could be built among each family office.
Baldwin found that Worth Avenue’s yachts appeal to members of a family office themselves, but they can also be attractive to family offices’ fund managers and money managers, some of whom can afford yachts in their own right. In other words, even if a particular family office isn’t currently in the market for a yacht, it may know or be affiliated with someone who is.
All in all, Family Office Access’s client services have helped Baldwin increase the speed and efficiency with which he builds relationships with his target customer base.
If you’d like to learn more about Family Office Access and the benefits you can realize from working with family offices for yacht sales and brokerage, contact us today. Our well-researched and up-to-date client list will provide you with a major advantage over the competition.