We make estate planning simple

We’re dedicated to helping advisors, planners, and attorneys deliver differentiated advice, expand their client relationships, win new business, and increase your ongoing value by offering simplified, scalable estate planning to every client.

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Built by advisors and estate planning experts to serve the wealth management industry

Vanilla was born out of need. In his career as one of Barron’s top ranked independent advisors, Steve Lockshin understood the power of estate planning to bring enormous value to clients. But he also saw first hand how broken the system was for people of all income levels. It was a costly, convoluted practice made up of a maze of obsolete tools and processes.

In 2019, Lockshin founded Vanilla to simplify and automate the process of estate planning, making it easier for financial advisors and attorneys to give bespoke estate strategies at scale.

With funding from Venrock and Insight Partners and other investors including F. William McNabb III, former CEO of Vanguard Group, Michael Jordan, NBA legend and businessman, and Jason Wenk, advisor and founder and CEO of Altruist, we have assembled a diverse team of top-performers from wealth management, estate planning, and enterprise software.

“The company has taken the wealth management industry by storm”

Innovative tech backed by deep estate planning experience

Jennifer Raess, JD, CFP, CLU

Product Counsel

Patrick Carlson, JD LLM

Product Counsel

Erica Ellis, JD

Product Counsel

Susan Stevens

Trusts & Estates Paralegal

Julia Santullano , JD

Director of Estate Abstraction Services

Sarah McDaniel, CFA

Head of Enterprise Enablement

The Vanilla Team

Our team brings together diverse perspectives from wealth management, design, technology, and estate planning backgrounds. We hail from small RIAs as well as some of the largest wealth management firms in the world. Our team draws on experience at Amazon, Smartsheet, Stripe, Addepar, and many other leaders in technology.

As a fintech startup focused on simplifying a complex space, we have built our team around people that have a passion for building beautifully designed products that make the complex simple.