Rodney L. Goldstein

Co-Managing Partner, Wealth Strategist Partners 

Wealth Strategist Partners is a Chicago based adviser to families of significant wealth – most often including a family business – providing highly customized advisory services across their financial, family business and family cultural wealth. As a firm of principals serving principals, we serve our clients as we serve our families.

Rod has worked with business-owning families for over 35 years. He joined WSP in 2017 and leads the firm’s work with family-owned businesses, which WSP refers to as Commercial Patriotism: helping business owning families sustain, perpetuate, and grow the long-term value of their companies. Rod has uncommon experience advising business owners through major transitions and into the future, often involving the overlapping and essential matters of estate concentration, governance planning, family member roles, generational evolution, business strategy, liquidity planning and balance sheet planning.

Rod spent over 30 years with Frontenac, a Chicago-based private equity firm, including 22 years as the firm’s Chairman and Managing Partner. Now in its 50th year, during his tenure, the firm grew from approximately $20 mm in assets under management to over $1 bn. While at Frontenac, in addition to firm-wide oversight roles, Rod served as lead investor and lead director of over 20 companies, all family or founder owned prior to Frontenac’s involvement; in many, he led the formation and board member recruitment of a company’s initial board of directors. He also was a director of several public companies including Big Lots (NYSE), DeVry, Inc. (NYSE), and AptarGroup (NYSE), serving on the audit and compensation committees of each. Prior to Frontenac, Rod was a member of the strategy consulting practice at Booz Allen Hamilton. He presently is an independent director and Governance Committee chair of a $1bn+ family-owned manufacturing company, and is an independent director of a mid-sized, rapidly growing business services company acquired from its founder by present leadership.

Rod has been engaged with civic and volunteer causes throughout his career. He is a trustee of the University of Chicago, a member of its investment committee, and is past chair of the University of Chicago Medical Center board. He is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago and past vice chair of the Economic Club of Chicago. A past trustee, Rod has served Philips Academy, Andover as a member of his investment committee for over 25 years; and he is a director and on the investment committee of the Western Golf Association. Prior engagements span inner-city and education-related causes. Early in his career, Rod was engaged in the stewardship of a family business founded by his great-grandfather in 1879 in Peoria, Illinois, where Rod was raised. Rod is a graduate of Phillips Academy – Andover, and received a B.A., cum laude, from Princeton University and an M.B.A from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has been married to the former Helen Keith Kiley for over 40 years; they have three young adult children.