Sean McEvilly, CFA

Sean McEvilly, CFA, is Managing Partner and Founder of Vistamark Investments. He advises families, business owners and family offices through the VistaWealth Office™, the firm’s private wealth and family office practice, and leads the firm’s private markets research: manager sourcing, due diligence and portfolio design across private equity, private credit and other less-efficient markets.

His private wealth work centers on families whose balance sheets have outgrown a single advisor: proceeds from a business sale, concentrated stock, several trusts and entities, and private investments that need written diligence, sizing and pacing. He works alongside each family’s tax and estate advisors so investment decisions fit the whole plan, and is a contributing author of Think Like a Family Office (2026). His recent writing for families includes How Much Private Equity and Private Credit Should a Family Hold?, What Is QSBS, and How Did the 2025 Tax Law Change It?, What Is Direct Indexing, and Who Should Use It? and How Should a Family Set Its Spending Policy?

His private markets work covers general partner selection, secondaries and alternative credit: how a manager sources and prices deals, how fees and fund terms compound over a fund’s life, and how much illiquidity a family or institution can carry. For investment committees he has written How OCIO Pricing Actually Works and Build vs Buy: The Real Cost of an Internal Investment Department.

Sean began his career in 2016 as an equity research analyst at PNC Bank and then joined Wells Fargo. From 2020 to 2022 he held leadership positions at Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management, where he oversaw institutional portfolios exceeding $2.5 billion in assets. In 2022 he founded Crescent Capital, an investment advisory firm he led as Principal and Chief Compliance Officer from 2022 to 2025, and in 2025 he co-founded Vistamark with Matt Rice.

Sean earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Northwestern University in 2014 and a Master’s in Management Studies from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in 2016, and was awarded the CFA charter in 2022. His collaboration with Matt Rice began in 2010, when Sean interned at DiMeo Schneider & Associates while at Northwestern. Since 2024 he has taught investments and finance as a Professor of Finance at Grand Canyon University. He splits his time between Chicago and Phoenix and leads the firm’s Arizona office.

Outside the firm, Sean serves on the Young Professionals Board of Beat the Streets Chicago, a nonprofit that uses wrestling to give Chicago youth mentorship, academic support and a path to college; is active in the mentor program for Northwestern University student-athletes, helping them prepare for careers after their playing days; and serves in leadership roles at Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Chicago, the local chapter of the global peer network for business owners, including on its Membership Subcommittee. He is Treasurer of the Kellogg Alumni Association of Phoenix and is involved with the Northwestern Undergraduate Alumni Association.

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn.