Jeanne Cotroneo Darrow

This cover story shares the story of a family of entrepreneurs and their small business journey.

You’ve worked hard your whole life, saving along the way for a retirement that’s now upon you. You’re finally ready to transition to a new lifestyle of relaxation and enjoying the things you’ve long dreamt of but never had the time for: traveling, reconnecting with old friends and spending more time with the grandkids, to name a few. But how realistic is this dream retirement if your portfolio has to contend with a market decline? Or if a longer-than-expected retirement puts you at risk of ru...

This profile of a U.S. Army Veteran and local business owner appeared in a community magazine.

This community magazine cover story highlights a couple who have taken risks to pursue their ambitious goals as small business owners. In just three years, while raising three young children and sadly losing both their fathers, Dana and Matt Santis have built a thriving company, helping neighbors make the most of their properties, especially their backyards.

Step into the New York City office of Hina Shamsi and you can’t help but notice the wall of women—12 carefully curated and framed photos of historical and modern-day female leaders. “I call it my wall of inspiration,” says Hina, the Chief Technology Officer of U.S. Banks and Head of Wealth Management Product Technology at Morgan Stanley.
Among those she’s inspired by are Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician from the 19th centu...

This cover story shares the story of U.S. Army Major Marikay Satryano, who served three consecutive tours during Operation Iraqi Freedom. We’re grateful to Marikay and her husband, Doctor Irwin Medina, for sharing their story of love for their country—and cars!

This profile of a veteran was written for a community magazine.

Katerina Simonetti Bakh still vividly remembers moving from Ukraine to Cuba when she was five and attending local schools taught entirely in Spanish. “Cuba is a melting pot, and I loved being in class with children of every skin color,” says the Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Advisor of her childhood experience in the Caribbean country, where the family had relocated for her father’s job. At age 10, she returned to her home country having experienced a real-world lesson in adaptability. “I lea...

In this issue, we celebrate the retirement of Janet Corrie, John Jay High School’s longtime monitor and greeter. We wish Janet well and thank her for the 22 years of kindness she’s shown the school community.

Julia Yue grew up in the small town of Gosport in the U.K., where her father had immigrated to after leaving Hong Kong in his twenties and found success as a restaurateur. She worked alongside her father in his restaurant, starting at age 10.
“I had a lot of interest in the financials of his business,” says Julia. “We’d strategize and try to find ways to make his business more profitable and attract more customers, from price adjustments to promotions.” Those early experiences helped her real...

This is a profile I wrote about East Fishkill's first service member killed in World War II.

Creating an enduring legacy involves implementing a variety of techniques that meet the goals of your estate plan. Trusts are an important lever in most plans, and charitable trusts can be a powerful planning tool for merging your philanthropic purpose with your family wealth transfer goals. That’s because they can be structured to provide income streams to beneficiaries and also create certain tax benefits for donors. Take for example...

In this community magazine cover story, we meet the Judge family and learn how they have used their love of sports to raise funds and awareness for cystic fibrosis research.

The is one in a series of veteran profiles written for a community magazine.

Married couples looking to transfer significant wealth to future generations have several estate planning tools available, including the Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT). SLATs can be particularly effective for married couples with a net worth or anticipated net worth greater than their combined federal lifetime estate and gift ...