Christine Leong Connors, the president and a partner at San Francisco’s EPIQ Capital Group, used to be a regular flyer with United Airlines. Recently, though, she’s switched her allegiance from United to Fort Worth-based American Airlines. The reason: all the travel she’s been doing between the Bay Area and Dallas, where EPIQ opened its third office last year in an office tower at 3131 McKinney Avenue.

EPIQ is a private, outsourced multi-family office and investment firm founded in 2018 by veteran wealth manager Chad Boeding. He’s a former partner and one of four co-founders of ICONIQ Capital, often referred to as the family office of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

“We are so thrilled to be there,” Connors said of EPIQ’s Dallas presence. “I love the caliber of talent we can bring into the firm, and it’s a community we want to be in. I’ve been there quite a bit.”

That’s because EPIQ, which works with clients worth at least $100 million, has been growing in North Texas, and Connors helps lead the firm’s daily operations.

After opening the 6,000-square-foot Dallas office with just a handful of remote workers, EPIQ now boasts a local staff of 27, topping even the 25 who work at its San Francisco headquarters. It also has eight employees at a third office in Reno, where many of its clients reside for Nevada’s favorable tax structure.

Four of EPIQ’s six leaders work in Dallas—the heads of tech, finance, portfolio management, and family office—and two relocated to North Texas from Northern California.

What Connors calls the “great innovation” that’s occurring in Dallas would seem to make the region a natural fit for EPIQ.

EPIQ Capital Group opened an Uptown Dallas office at 3131 McKinney Avenue last year. [Photo: EPIQ Capital]

‘It’s a nice thing to be truly independent’

With more than $4 billion in assets under management and $40 billion in wealth across all its families, the boutique firm offers investment and other advice to the likes of senior executives, founders, and early employees of high-profile companies.

EPIQ says it maintains more than 100 exclusive fund manager and company relationships, as well as more than 75 vendor partnerships across a full suite of family-office services.

Boeding, who is the firm’s CEO, scored a coup in 2021 when he hired Connors away from J.P. Morgan, where she’d worked her entire 20-plus-year career.

At the time she was the head of J.P. Morgan’s Private Bank in Northern California, overseeing about 100 people and actively managing $25 billion in client assets. When she’d assumed the role in 2012, she had less than half the client assets and a team of only about 40.

So, what led her to make such a dramatic move?

Connors has cited the opportunity to partner with Boeding, whom she already knew, and a shared vision to be the best firm working with the right clients.

Independence played into the decision, too.

“It’s a nice thing to be truly independent, to help clients across everything they’re looking to do,” she says. “I also had a dream of building a business on my own. There aren’t too many women-run multi-family offices.”

EPIQ’s 6,000-square-foot Uptown office boasts a spacious boardroom—and four of the company’s six leaders. [Photo: EPIQ Capital]

Investments in SpaceX and Hines

EPIQ, which rebranded in September with a new tagline, “An experience beyond wealth,” and a unique new gold fingerprint logo, says it takes a “transparent and holistic approach” to managing a family’s financial and personal goals.

Among its offerings are tax, trust, and estate advice; family services (like household management); and philanthropy and charitable-giving plans. It also facilitates short-term lending, public- and private-market investment management, and direct and co-investments.

The many companies EPIQ has invested in so far include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Houston-based Hines. Its North Texas clients include tech entrepreneur Nirav Tolia, who moved to Highland Park from San Francisco in 2021.   

In North Texas, Connors says, the firm has the right of first refusal on space adjacent to its McKinney Avenue office, since “we want to continue to grow in Dallas.

“I love the culture,” she adds. “I love the big Dallas, Texas, welcome I get when I’m there.”

Some of that has come when she’s co-hosted enthusiastic, eclectic gatherings of North Texas women of all ages from the for-profit and nonprofit sectors.

Would Connors ever think of relocating to North Texas herself?

“I would,” she replies—if she didn’t have an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old who might not be as keen on moving. 

Meanwhile, it looks like American Airlines will continue to benefit from her travel schedule.

Quincy Preston contributed to this report. 

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