Anu Rames is the founder and Managing Principal of Sustainable Investment Partners LLC (SIP), a fee-only, fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor in Lexington, Massachusetts.

She spent nearly two decades as an institutional investor at BNP Paribas Asset Management, Liberty Mutual Investments, Boston Trust Walden, Essex Investments, and Ardennes Capital. At Liberty Mutual she sat on the 401(k) Investment Committee, overseeing retirement assets for more than 72,000 participants. She holds an MBA from Babson College and an engineering degree from Calicut University, and wrote The Messiness of Personal Finance.

Structure first, then allocation. Define the mandate, the time horizon, and the constraints, and the portfolio decisions follow from that instead of from forecasts or product pitches.

The starting assumption is that most capital underperforms because of indecision, not because of bad markets. Money sits in savings, in an old 401(k), or in a portfolio nobody has revisited in years, and the cost compounds quietly. Diversified, long-horizon, instrument-agnostic. No market timing.

Two groups. Individuals and families building or consolidating personal wealth — 401(k)s, rollovers, taxable accounts, inherited assets, cash waiting to be invested. And nonprofit organizations with endowments, operating reserves, and boards that need an investment policy they can actually follow.

The process is the same institutional one in both cases. The mandate is what changes.

Fee-only means SIP is paid by clients and no one else. No commissions, no product revenue, no referral payments from fund companies.

Fiduciary means the advice has to be in the client's interest, not merely suitable for them. Together they remove the question of who the recommendation is really serving.

No. SIP has no account minimums. Institutional process, individual mandate — you do not need a certain number of zeros to get a real portfolio.

It is the most common situation SIP sees, and it is fixable. Idle cash and orphaned retirement accounts are usually not a discipline problem — they are the residue of a decision that never had a clear next step attached to it.

The first conversation is about what that capital is for. The mechanics come after.

With an Investment Policy Statement. It sets the spending needs, liquidity requirements, time horizon, and risk tolerance the board has agreed to, so investment decisions stop depending on who is in the room at a given meeting.

From there: portfolio construction, ongoing monitoring, and manager search or RFP support when it is needed. Boards change. The policy is what carries across.

No. SIP builds both traditional and values-aligned portfolios, and clients choose. The values-aligned work exists because some clients want it, not because it is required.

At Charles Schwab, as independent custodian. SIP never takes custody of client money. You can see your account directly, and SIP's disclosures are public in the ADV Part 2 and in the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database.

A call, no cost, no obligation. You describe what you have and what you are trying to do; Anu tells you whether SIP is the right fit and what she would look at first. If it is not a fit, she will say so.