Meet Our Team

James M. Harris, III (Jay) has been providing comprehensive, holistic advice to his clients since 1990. Jay is a Private Wealth Financial Advisor and Managing Director – Investments at Harris Financial Strategies Group of Wells Fargo Advisors and focuses on offering comprehensive, holistic advice in all market environments. Jay and his team focus on providing investment planning for private, family-held businesses and the families that operate them.

Over the past three decades, Jay has learned that providing advice and services to family-held businesses under a comprehensive investment plan is often far beyond the capacity of any one professional advisor. It requires a well-coordinated, collaborative effort by a team of professionals from the legal, insurance, investment, estate, business, and tax disciplines to provide the scale of planning, advice, and resources needed.

Jay and his team take a similar approach as a family office. Like a family office, beyond basic financial services, Jay can provide his clients access to Wells Fargo affiliate products and services such as Wealth Planning, Private Banking, Trust and Fiduciary Services, and Insurance as well as various customized and more traditional lending products.

As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and a Certified Investment Management Analyst® (CIMA®), Jay helps analyze every aspect of his clients’ financial lives – including assets, liabilities and cash flow, current insurance coverages, and investment and tax strategies – and executes approved plans designed to help achieve well-defined objectives. This also encompasses benchmarking progress towards reaching financial goals and making necessary adjustments to his recommendations. 

Away from the office, Jay has been an active member of the Albany community for more than 20 years. He enjoys spending time with his wife, Cherie, and daughters, visiting the beaches of 30-A, and listening to live music.