JOHN A. WARNICK, Founder, Family Wealth Transitions & Solutions
John A. Warnick is known by family, friends and clients as “John A”. After practicing for thirty-one years as a tax and legal advisor to wealthy families, in early 2010 he left a large law firm where he chaired the Private Client Services Group. What led John A to plunge into the world of consulting? He is driven by a passion to assist clients in avoiding untended negative consequences when they transfer wealth to the next generations of their family.
Mr. Warnick’s Seven Keys of Purposeful Trusts and Six Paradigms of Purposeful Planning are revolutionizing the way estate plans are designed and implemented. These concepts ensure the impact of a family’s wealth will be a positive force in the lives of the rising generations. John A has prepared himself for this professional service through a long-term collaboration with a team of wealth psychologists and one of the world’s foremost Family Wealth Counselors. But he is quick to point out “my greatest teachers have been my clients. It is through them I discovered the formula for producing not just tax-wise plans but plans that promote family harmony, individual growth and long-term preservation of family wealth.”
John A is keenly interested in the challenges facing family business owners. In 2010 he was certified as a facilitator for the Family Business Assessment Tool and the Family Wealth Dynamics Assessment Tool, both of which were developed by Dr. Dean Fowler in collaboration with Marquette University. These tools are used to objectively measure how effectively a family is performing in twelve critical areas of success in the transitioning of a family business or family wealth. In the last fifteen years they have been utilized by over 550 families around the world. Mr. Warnick explains: “These tools are a diagnostic that functions like a MRI: they spot things which normally don’t surface in a comprehensive interview process. They also help us objectively see the strengths which are a family’s key to effectively address those issues.”
Additional Information & Credentials:
- Initiator of the Seedlings blog which offers suggestions for how parents and grandparents can increase their generative influence and make their testamentary and lifetime gifts more purposeful and positive.
- Founding Collaborator of the Purposeful Planning Collaboration, a virtual community which brings thought leaders and innovators together to share best practices for Legacy Families and Families in Business.
- Enjoys educating, training and mentoring adolescents and emerging adults in financial literacy, philanthropic service and holistic family wealth principles
- Worked with a team of nationally recognized family wealth coaches and psychologists to explore the intersection of wealth and emerging adulthood
- Speaks extensively across the nation to both professional audiences and client events
- Working currently on two books entitled The Seven Keys of Purposeful Trusts – How to Make Your Family Wealth a Powerfully Positive Legacy and The New Vocabulary of Family Wealth
- B.A. degree, Magna Cum Laude, Brigham Young University
- J.D. degree, with honors, George Washington University
"So often the heart of what our clients want to accomplish is lost in the legal protection and instructions. Our thinking in legal matters and the pressures of “getting it right” blur the bigger picture for us.
I highly recommend this organization to you if you want to think beyond the technical side and integrate the human dimension."
- James Smyth Attorney, Crotty & Smyth
