Max Ortiz

Max Ortiz, Managing Director – Investments has spent more than 14 years advising founders, entrepreneurs, investors, executives and multigenerational families. At Wells Fargo Advisors, he is building an innovation-focused wealth practice that combines the firm’s long standing roots in the Bay Area with the scale and breadth to serve increasingly complex needs, from early-stage wealth creation through significant liquidity events and multigenerational planning. Max builds enduring relationships by staying close to clients through market cycles, career transitions and changing family priorities.

Max works with clients whose needs often extend beyond a traditional investment portfolio. He advises across all aspects of a client’s balance sheet, connecting assets, liabilities, liquidity and long-term goals. His areas of focus include pre- and post-IPO planning, equity compensation, portfolio construction, cash flow planning, liability management, tax-efficient wealth planning, and insurance and risk management. For clients with concentrated or restricted equity positions, he helps evaluate liquidity, diversification, and risk management strategies.

Founders and investors rarely have simple balance sheets. Their wealth may span private and public equity, real estate, trusts, operating businesses and significant credit needs. Max uses an integrated, advisor-led approach that brings together investment management, planning, banking, lending and trust capabilities across Wells Fargo. This allows clients to address more of their financial lives through a single coordinated relationship. Max remains closely involved throughout, bringing in specialists when needed while serving as the client’s central point of contact.

Before joining Wells Fargo Advisors, Max spent six years as a Wealth Advisor with SVB Private and First Citizens Wealth. There, he worked closely with founders, investors and technology executives through company growth, liquidity events and the financial decisions that followed. Earlier in his career, Max was a senior vice president at Bank of America Private Bank, advising high-net-worth families and institutional clients on investments, credit, estate planning strategies and banking.

Before joining Bank of America Private Bank, Max worked in the portfolio management group at Hall Capital Partners, a multifamily office specializing in alternative investments. He began his career at Western Asset Management Company, a global fixed-income investment firm. His experience across private banking, investment management and the multifamily-office setting continues to shape how he advises clients today.

Max earned a B.A. in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a four-time NCAA national champion and earned All-American honors in tennis. He is an avid tennis player, surfer and golfer and a former board member of the Tennis Coalition of San Francisco and the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Council.

Max lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children. Outside of work, he enjoys coaching his children, spending time with family and friends, and being outdoors throughout the Bay Area.