Gratz Park Private Wealth and founder Sherry Holley focus on a highly personalized approach to investment strategies
Lexington might not be where Sherry Holley, president and founder of Gratz Park Private Wealth, spent her early childhood. But it is where Holley’s family would ultimately plant their roots as she reached her high school years. As a graduate of Lafayette High School, those roots have remained strong throughout her personal and professional life ever since.
“I moved around a lot as an Army brat,” Holley says, recalling childhood stints in Florida and Germany. Her parents, however, were both from Western Kentucky, near Paducah, and eventually the family settled in Lexington.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in business management from Transylvania University, where a May-term class helped set the course for her career. The professor took an unconventional approach to teaching wealth management: Students essentially became brokers, building mock portfolios and experiencing the excitement and pressure of the Wall Street trading floor.
Holley was hooked.
Gratz Park Private Wealth founder and president Sherry Holley. Photo by Michelle Citrin Studios
Nearly three decades later, her career has included extensive experience as a senior wealth advisor and advanced education through the Wharton Business School and Yale School of Management. She completed Wharton’s Wealth Planning Essentials Program in 2016 and Securities Industry Institute in 2017, and earned her Certified Private Wealth Advisor certification through the Yale School of Management.
However, for Sherry Holley, wealth management has never been just about the numbers.
It is about people, families, possibilities and, ultimately, what money can make possible in a person’s life.
That philosophy has guided her through nearly three decades in the wealth management industry and, since 2018, as president of Gratz Park Private Wealth, the independent Lexington firm she founded with a desire to do things a little more independently.
After years at Hilliard Lyons (which since became Baird), Holley realized she wanted greater freedom to determine how she served her clients.
“Big companies and banks have such narrow parameters in which they have to work,” she says. “That just wasn’t for me anymore.”
Eight months after she left Hilliard Lyons, the company was acquired by Baird, reinforcing for Holley that the decision to establish an independent practice had been the right one.
At Gratz Park Private Wealth, Holley has built a practice centered on a highly personalized approach to wealth management. The firm specializes in serving clients by integrating investment, tax and estate planning into unique strategies designed around each client’s specific goals and circumstances.
The staff at Gratz Park Private Wealth. Photo furnished
The distinction is important to Holley. Rather than asking simply how much a client can make, she believes wealth management should begin with a more fundamental question: What does that wealth mean to the person who has it?
That desire for an independent approach ultimately led Holley to do things a little differently, the obvious contrast being that it is a primarily female company in a male dominated industry.
That was never part of a deliberate plan, Holley says.
“I didn’t,” she says when asked if she set out to build a primarily female company. “It just kind of shook out that way.”
The firm does employ a man whom Holley describes as exceptionally talented — “we couldn’t pass up the talent” — but she believes the predominantly female team has become part of what makes the company unique.
Holley sees a philosophical distinction in the way women and men may approach financial conversations.
“With men there’s a feeling of, ‘What’s the bottom dollar? Where’s the most gained?’ ” she says. “With women, financial and wealth management is more about, ‘What does this dollar mean? How can it support me and my family?’ ”
For Holley, that difference is especially relevant because financial conversations can be deeply personal.
“Finances can be a very personal and intimate conversation,” she says. “I think some people are just more comfortable having those conversations with women.”
While her client base remains primarily Lexington and Central Kentucky-based, Gratz Park Private Wealth’s reach has expanded well beyond the region. Clients who once lived locally have moved across the country, including students and retirees, while the firm recently acquired a small Asheville, North Carolina, practice, creating a new client base in that market.
Yet Lexington remains central to Holley’s professional and personal identity.
Her commitment to the community extends far beyond her business. She supports many local organizations and serves on several local boards; including her alma mater Transylvania University, where she chairs the Investment Committee and serves as vice chair of the Finance Committee.
Holley is reluctant to describe herself as a trailblazer simply because she leads a primarily female organization in a traditionally male-dominated field.
Gratz Park Private Wealth has a predominately female staff and has acquired an Asheville, North Carolina, practice. Photo furnished
Instead, she defines trailblazing more broadly as a willingness to question convention and remain open to what comes next.
“I think of being a trailblazer because I’m open to anything new and interesting,” she says.
That philosophy extends to the way she leads her team. Holley encourages employees to bring forward new technologies, strategies and ideas, even if they ultimately decide those innovations are not right for the firm.
“I tell my staff, ‘Our options are as big as the blue ocean,’” she says. “There’s nothing I don’t want to hear about.”
For Holley, not every new idea will become part of Gratz Park Private Wealth’s approach. But every idea deserves consideration.
That openness may be the clearest expression of the fresh perspective Holley has brought to an industry built on tradition: Wealth management is not simply about preserving what has been accumulated. It is about understanding the people behind it, helping them make informed choices, and giving them the freedom to shape what comes next.
And for a Lexington native ultimately by circumstance and now by choice, community commitment and nearly 30 years of experience, Holley is building that future on her own terms.