Gretchen Meyer didn’t set out to build a wealth management firm. She set out to rebuild her own financial life.
In her twenties, a divorce she didn’t see coming revealed a financial picture she didn’t fully understand. Debt she didn’t know existed. Accounts she hadn’t been part of. Decisions that now fell entirely on her. She had the intelligence and the drive to figure it out, but she didn’t have an advisor who understood what she was actually navigating—not just the numbers, but the weight of starting over while trying to stay standing.
That experience changed the trajectory of everything that followed. She earned her MBA from Columbia Business School and built a career in financial services. And in 2014, she founded Pachira Wealth Management with a clarity of purpose: to be the advisor she needed and couldn’t find.
Pachira exists for the woman making consequential financial decisions, often alone, under pressure, and without an advisor who truly sees her full situation. Not as a niche. As the client the firm was designed around from day one.
Gretchen holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation, the most widely recognized standard of competence and ethics in financial planning. The CFP® requires rigorous coursework, a comprehensive examination, demonstrated professional experience, and an ongoing commitment to continuing education and ethical practice. It is not a credential that is handed out. It is one that is earned and maintained.
Our advisors are legally required to act in a fiduciary capacity when providing advisory services. In all client relationships, we strive to act in our clients’ best interests by providing recommendations based on their individual goals, needs, and circumstances, rather than on commissions or product-based incentives. We believe this is the standard that all financial advisors should uphold. This is the advisor’s standards that has been operating since the firm’s founding in 2014.
Pachira’s client accounts are held and processed through LPL Financial, one of the largest independent broker-dealers in the country,1 supporting over 32,000 financial advisors and $2.3 trillion in assets.2 That infrastructure provides institutional-level security and reliability behind every client relationship, while the guidance, the planning, and the personal attention remain Gretchen’s.
1. As reported by Financial Planning magazine, 1996–2025, based on total revenue. 2. As of July 2nd, 2026.
Most financial firms that market to women do so from the outside looking in. They add a women’s page. They hire a female advisor. They use the word “empowerment” in their headline and move on. Pachira was built differently, and the difference is not cosmetic.
When Gretchen founded Pachira, she deliberately chose not to build a generalist firm that also serves women. She built a firm where women are the clients, the conversation, and the point of the whole enterprise. That shapes everything: how planning conversations are structured, how complex life transitions are handled, how referrals are received, and how long-term relationships are maintained.
Working with a woman-owned firm means you are not an afterthought to someone else’s business model. It means the advisor across the table has spent her entire career thinking about the financial realities that are specific to women: the caregiving years that interrupt earnings, the transitions that reshape financial plans overnight, the complexity of being the one everyone else depends on. That context does not come from a training module. It comes from building a firm around it.
It also means you are working with an advisor who has something personally at stake in getting this right. Pachira’s reputation, growth, and future are built entirely on the outcomes of its relationships with women like you. That is a different kind of accountability than you will find at a firm where women’s wealth management is one division among many.
Not because she has a magic formula. Because she sees your full picture, asks the right questions, and stays in the relationship long enough to matter. If that sounds like what you have been looking for, let’s start a conversation.
Pachira is a small firm by design. That is not a limitation. It is a deliberate choice that shapes the quality and consistency of every client relationship.
Every person on the Pachira team is here because they believe in what this firm is building and who it is building it for. The relationships you form here are not handed off, reassigned, or managed by committee. They are personal, continuous, and built to last.
These are the questions women ask most often before they decide whether Pachira is the right fit. Gretchen answers them directly.
Gretchen Meyer, MBA, CFP®, is the founder of Pachira Wealth Management and a female financial advisor based in Albany, NY. She founded Pachira in 2014, focusing on helping women build financial confidence and independence.
Yes. Gretchen holds the CFP® (CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®) designation, which requires meeting rigorous education, examination, experience, and ethics requirements set by the CFP® Board of Standards.
Pachira offers wealth management for women and couples, including investment management, customized financial planning, retirement planning, estate planning guidance, tax planning insights, and cash flow management.
Yes. Pachira Wealth Management was founded by and is led by Gretchen Meyer, making it a woman-owned firm dedicated specifically to serving women.
Pachira is based in Albany, NY (Latham) and serves clients across the Capital Region, New York City, and throughout the United States.
