Profile
Sharon Hayut didn’t find her way into financial advising through a straight line. She arrived through an unexpected door – one that opened, she says, at exactly the right moment. What she discovered almost immediately was that she had something the industry rarely trains for: the ability to listen deeply, translate complexity into plain language, and hold steady during the moments that matter most in a client’s life.
“Money is rarely just about money,” Hayut says. “It is about security, identity, legacy, and freedom.” That understanding – forged early, watching her parents manage their finances – became the compass for everything she has built since.
Hayut is a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst in New York City, where she has grown her practice to more than $250 million in AUM. What makes that milestone more notable is that she has reached it while preserving the intimacy and individualization of a boutique advisory practice.
A significant portion of her client base sits at one of the most demanding intersections in wealth management: celebrity clients whose income can swing dramatically from one year to the next and women navigating major life transitions – divorce, widowhood, a first step into financial independence – often for the first time. Every new client relationship begins with what she calls a “full-life audit” – not a review of assets and liabilities, but a deep exploration of how a person thinks about money and what they want their wealth to do.
If Hayut has a defining professional quality, she names it without hesitation: presence. “When I am with a client, nothing else exists,” she explains. Closely tied to that is what she describes as emotional steadiness – the ability to remain the calm in the storm when markets fall, divorces unfold, or health crises arrive without warning. Clients in those moments, she says, don’t need an advisor who panics alongside them.
Hayut entered the industry during the Great Recession of 2008, when there was no time for a gradual education. The discipline that period demanded has never left her. Today, she maintains a daily practice of market and policy reading that extends beyond financial press into geopolitical analysis, legislative updates, and behavioral economics.
As a woman in a male-dominated industry, Hayut encountered the kind of invisible barriers that rarely appear in formal complaints but shape careers nonetheless: being talked over, having credentials questioned in ways male colleagues’ weren’t, and watching a prospect’s gaze drift to someone else even when she had the answer. Her response was to become impossible to ignore and to stop trying to win by the old rules entirely.
Client satisfaction, for Hayut, is never a metric. It’s a woman calling six months after her divorce was finalized to say she made her first independent investment decision – and it felt right. It’s a widow who once feared the financial world now sitting across the table with quiet authority.
“I believe I have delivered when a client tells me they feel more financially free than they ever have before,” she says.
90 Park Ave, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10016
845 641 4223
sharon.hayut@magnusfinancial.com
linkedin.com/in/sharon-hayut-cdfa®-2a47a29
magnusfinancial.com
Sharon Hayut
Senior Managing Director
Magnus Financial Group
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2014–2022
2019
2021
2022
Present
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
2014–2022
Forbes’ Next Gen Best in State Advisor
2019
America’s Top Women Advisors
Forbes’ Best in State Wealth Advisor
2021
Forbes’ Best in State Woman Financial Advisor
2022
Senior Managing Director at Magnus Financial Group since 2022
Present
Milestones
“At this stage in my career, I’m not trying to impress clients with technical language. I’m focused on helping them make better decisions”
William Chan,
Modern Vision Planning, Sterling Mutuals Inc.
“A message is only as strong as the receiver’s ability to understand it. Good intent isn’t enough if the client can’t clearly see the benefits and trade-offs”
William Chan,
Modern Vision Planning, Sterling Mutuals Inc.