This is one in a series of articles in our special report, “Women in Family Offices.” To view all the articles, click here.
From female advisors to matriarchs who are becoming lead decision-makers for their families, women are playing a stronger role in the family office ecosystem. Increasingly, having women at the table doesn’t just make equitable sense—it makes business sense.
As part of our ongoing coverage of Women in Family Offices, Canadian Family Offices’ Ashley Redmond sat down with Martha Simmons, co-chief operating officer at Forthlane Partners, a Toronto-based multi-family office. Their wide-ranging discussion covers how female colleagues approach clients, what female clients seem to be looking for in the family office space, and why equal representation matters.
Transcript highlights
Ashley: In 2025, I think it’s safe to say the landscape of the family office has probably evolved compared to 20 or 30 years ago. There’s likely more women today. Why is it important to have women in the family office space?
Martha Simmons: So as an industry, I think the finance industry has been traditionally dominated by men. From that perspective, I think it’s really important, especially as young women are coming up in the industry to feel like they have representation, that they have mentors who can support them as they come up and grow in the industry.
Because that’s definitely changing. And more and more women are in the finance space. And then from a client perspective, I think it is important to have different kinds of people that clients can feel represented in the people who are serving them. To us, it’s really important that clients feel that they can trust us. They can share their confidential information and share their experiences and life stories with us. And often that is easier if they see themselves represented in the people that they’re speaking with.
Also, women are increasingly becoming the wealth creators and wealth inheritors. So we are seeing more and more women in the family office space as the lead decision makers.
And again, it’s not essential, but it is helpful for them to be able to find people supporting them who, whose lives and whose experiences they can see in themselves.
Ashley: So, it’s safe to say that it makes a difference in your business when there’s equal representation?
Martha Simmons: Yes. Our team is very diverse ethnically, by gender and by age. And so, we find it very helpful to be able to have different perspectives, in all kinds of areas, to be able to draw from. And we’re very deliberate about how we curate meetings to make sure that clients and prospects feel comfortable meeting with us and sharing their stories. So we’ll think about, what experience do we have on this team? What academic backgrounds? What working backgrounds? And then gender definitely plays a role in that. And then we sort of pull together the best team possible to be able to support clients.
Ashley: And with the fear of oversimplifying things here. We do hear this at Canadian family offices that women tend to approach clients a little differently. Do you find that?
Martha Simmons: We have two senior women that deal with clients frequently in our office. And I do think Vanessa and I do, sometimes manage clients differently, but we’re also both coming from a different academic background. We’re both lawyers by training. So, it’s hard to say whether it’s our backgrounds that is the difference or not. Men certainly can have conversations, deep conversations about emotions and so on, as well. But I do think that sometimes, an effort that we often make (and maybe it’s because we don’t come from the finance world) is to break things down and simplify things for clients who might have a different financial acumen, to others. Whereas our highly sophisticated investment team thinks about (these) things day in and day out. From that perspective, it’s easier for us to be the translators, and to break things down in a bit more, simplified way.
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