Maria Ceballos

The professional services landscape is built on a well-defined hierarchy. At the top sit the Big Four: Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG. Below them are the national firms: Grant Thornton, BDO, Baker Tilly, RSM, and Crowe. Then come regional and boutique firms. Each tier has its own client profile, compensation structure, and career progression path. Moving between firms at the right moment, into the right practice area, can accelerate a career by years.

Family office advisory is one of the fastest growing practice areas in professional services. As generational wealth transfers accelerate and ultra-high-net-worth families demand more sophisticated operational support, firms like Baker Tilly have built dedicated family office practices that combine tax planning, compliance, investment oversight, and operational management under one umbrella. These roles require a rare combination of technical depth (audit, compliance, IT risk) and operational leadership.

For someone with a CISA certification and years of advisory experience at a national firm, the pivot into family office operations is a high-value career move. But these roles are rarely posted publicly. They are filled through targeted recruiting, firm-to-firm lateral moves, and industry relationships. Understanding which firms are building out their family office practices, and which ones need the specific combination of compliance and operations expertise, requires deep knowledge of the professional services market.

Maria came to Archer Careers with over six years of advisory experience at Grant Thornton, where she had risen from associate to manager leading SOC 1 and SOC 2 engagements across healthcare, insurance, financial services, and loan servicing. She held a CISA certification and had developed deep expertise in compliance, IT audit, and risk advisory.

After a brief stint as Director at a smaller firm, Maria wanted to return to a national platform where she could leverage her compliance and operational expertise in a growing practice area. The challenge was specificity: she needed a role that valued her unique combination of audit, compliance, and operational management skills, at a firm with the scale and client base to support long-term career growth. The family office space was the ideal fit, but these roles are rarely visible on the open market.

Archer's team designed a campaign that targeted the specific intersection of Maria's skill set: compliance expertise, operational leadership, and client-facing advisory. Rather than applying broadly across professional services, the campaign focused on firms actively expanding their family office, private client, and wealth advisory practices.

Each application was positioned around Maria's CISA certification and her experience managing complex compliance engagements across multiple regulated industries. For Baker Tilly specifically, the materials highlighted her track record of leading SOC engagements from initiation to delivery and her ability to manage cross-functional teams.

Archer's team identified firms that had recently announced family office practice expansions or made lateral hires in adjacent areas, signals that additional headcount was imminent. This sourcing intelligence allowed the campaign to target opportunities before they were publicly posted.

Of the 72 targeted applications, 8 resulted in interview invitations from professional services firms across multiple practice areas, an 11.1% interview rate.

Maria received 2 offers and accepted a position as Operations Manager in Baker Tilly's Family Office practice, bringing her compliance and operational expertise to one of the fastest growing segments in professional services.

Maria's move to Baker Tilly was not just a lateral transfer between professional services firms. It was a strategic pivot into a high-growth practice area where her specific combination of skills is exceptionally valuable. Family office operations managers with compliance backgrounds are in short supply, and the role positions her for long-term leadership within one of the most in-demand advisory verticals.

The placement demonstrates that precision matters more than volume. Baker Tilly's family office practice needed exactly what Maria offered, and Archer's campaign made sure she was in front of them at the right time.