The directors of Rice, Heard & Bigelow (“RHB”) are pleased to announce that Adam C. Rutledge has been named a shareholder and director of the firm. Adam holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and has worked in the Investment Group of RHB and its associated registered investment advisory practice, Minot DeBlois Advisors, since 2010.
Rice, Heard & Bigelow is a partnership of private trustees that traces its history to 1782, when it was founded by the financier and historian George Richards Minot. Among the firm’s early accounts was Benjamin Franklin’s legacy to the City of Boston, of which George Minot’s son William served as trustee for 64 years. This tradition of fiduciary duty, prudent investment management, and relationships built on trust and discretion has served generations of families in Massachusetts and beyond for more than 200 years. It continues now into the 21st century, and Adam joins the five current partners as the newest addition to this long legacy of personal, independent trusteeship on behalf of individuals, families, and charities.
In addition to his work at RHB, Adam is very active in the greater Boston community. He is involved in ESG investing and serves as a board member and Chair of the Socially Responsible Investing Committee of the Trustees of Donations to the Protestant Episcopal Church, which manages endowment assets for churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Among several other board memberships, Adam is also the President of the Sears Charitable Trust, and he serves as an independent trustee of an 18th-century charitable trust that benefits Native American causes.
Originally from South Carolina, Adam graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English and Philosophy from Wake Forest University in North Carolina, where he was an editor of and contributor to the literary magazine Three to Four Ounces, played varsity soccer, and was awarded the senior English department fellowship for his honors thesis work on the American poet James Merrill. Following a year spent teaching English in a small mountain village in rural Japan, he completed a master’s degree summa cum laude at Yale University in religion and literature under Professor Harold Bloom. He earned his doctorate in the English Ph.D. program at Brandeis University, for which he focused on High Modernism and the history of the book, and during which time he wrote and served as editor of the internal catalogue of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the Boston Public Library. Before transitioning to a career in private wealth management, Adam taught in the undergraduate program at Brandeis University for several years and then worked for an academic publisher as a business and economics subject matter expert developing and reviewing materials for publication in college textbooks.
Rice, Heard & Bigelow is a privately-owned firm of professional trustees serving individuals, families and charities. The organization of the firm is unique, in that the principals are named as individual trustees, rather than the company being named as corporate trustee. We believe our structure furthers the primary goal of discreet, personal service through long-standing trustee relationships. Many of the families we advise have been with us for generations. In addition to managing and administering funded trusts, the firm also prepares income tax returns for trusts, estates, charities, and individuals. Other services include wealth, tax, estate, and philanthropic planning.
It is our mission to be a safe harbor for those looking for independent advice, honesty, responsiveness and trust, all of which we trace back to the firm’s inception more than 200 years ago.
