Goldman Names Sara Naison-Tarajano Head of Ayco Wealth Planning Unit

Goldman Sachs named Sara Naison-Tarajano head of its Ayco wealth planning division, putting a 27-year company insider in charge of a business that manages $26 billion and serves more than half of the Fortune 100 through corporate-sponsored financial planning programs.

Naison-Tarajano succeeds David Fox, who will retire after 27 years at the firm. Fox had held the Ayco role for roughly a year, stepping in after Larry Restieri departed; Restieri now serves as CEO of Hightower. The back-to-back leadership changes at a division of this scale are notable, and Goldman's decision to reach deep into its own ranks signals where the firm sees institutional trust as the priority.

Ayco is not a typical wealth management shop. Founded in 1971 and acquired by Goldman in 2003, when it had roughly $6 billion under management, the business embeds itself inside corporations, offering employees and executives investment management, financial planning, tax preparation, and estate coordination. It currently works with hundreds of companies, including more than half of the Fortune 100. For Goldman employees who have interacted with Ayco-style benefits at their own firm, the scope of the business is familiar: it is the kind of financial planning infrastructure that large employers use to retain senior talent.

Naison-Tarajano joined Goldman as an analyst in the Investment Banking Division in 1999, made managing director in 2012, and was named partner in 2020. Her most recent roles were Global Head of Private Wealth Management Capital Markets and Global Head of Goldman Sachs Apex, the firm's dedicated family office business. She will carry a third title alongside the Ayco appointment, continuing as Global Head of the Goldman Partner Office, the internal program that serves the firm's own partners.

That last role matters for context. Running the Goldman Partner Office while simultaneously leading a $26 billion external-facing wealth unit means Naison-Tarajano sits at an unusual intersection: she manages financial services for some of the firm's most senior internal stakeholders while overseeing a division built to do something similar for executives at hundreds of outside companies.

Goldman's strategic logic for Ayco has sharpened over the past several years. In 2019, the firm acquired United Capital, the RIA platform built by Joe Duran, and attempted to combine it with Ayco under a single umbrella called the Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management Group, co-headed by Duran and Restieri. The integration never fully took hold. In 2023, Goldman sold the former United Capital business to Creative Planning, keeping Ayco and signaling, in the words attributed to CEO David Solomon at the time, that the firm would concentrate on ultra-high-net-worth investors through its Private Wealth Management and Ayco franchises.

The press release framed the appointment as evidence of Goldman's intent "to harness One Goldman Sachs to serve clients," the firm's standard language for cross-divisional collaboration. What the move concretely illustrates is that Ayco, after years of M&A turbulence around it, now has a long-tenured partner at the helm whose career has run through investment banking, capital markets, and family office services, rather than a specialist brought in from outside.