Breaking Silos: Why Hewes Brought Insider Julia Stoll to Lead Strategy

NEW YORK, NY – October 19, 2026 — In the modern business landscape, the most efficient systems are those that successfully eliminate the friction between what a product does and how it is ultimately communicated to the end user. For decades, the financial services industry operated with rigid, impenetrable boundaries: product development teams built the investment vehicles, distribution teams aggressively sold them, and public relations agencies were handed a finalized press release to blast into the media ether. Today, that disjointed, linear model is rapidly becoming obsolete.

The recent appointment of Julia Stoll as Senior Vice President of Strategy & Growth at Hewes, a premier financial communications firm, is a powerful testament to this structural shift. By recruiting a senior executive straight from the internal marketing engines of major asset managers, the agency is signaling a broader industry pivot. It is no longer enough for external partners to simply understand the media landscape; they must intimately understand the internal plumbing of the organizations they represent.

Bridging the Gap Between Creation and Communication

The traditional agency model often suffers from a fundamental disconnect. External communicators frequently lack the granular, behind-the-scenes understanding of how financial products are actually conceptualized, vetted, and distributed. Stoll’s career trajectory offers a direct antidote to this systemic inefficiency.

Before joining the New York and Los Angeles-based firm, Stoll served as Vice President of Public Product Marketing at TCW, where she spearheaded the marketing strategy for a massive global public product suite that included exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, UCITS, and separately managed accounts. Her day-to-day reality involved navigating the complex web of compliance regulations, portfolio manager temperaments, and distribution hurdles that dictate the success or failure of a financial product.

"Julia knows how asset management firms work from the inside: how product, distribution, compliance and investment teams make decisions, and what communications has to deliver for them," Steve Schaefer, Managing Partner at Hewes, noted in the official announcement.

This insider perspective is increasingly viewed as the gold standard for strategic communications. One senior marketing executive at a competing asset manager noted privately that the greatest source of agency turnover stems from external teams failing to grasp the regulatory and distribution nuances of complex financial instruments. By bringing in a practitioner who has sat on the other side of the desk, the agency effectively collapses the learning curve, allowing for the rapid deployment of integrated programs that optimize client visibility and positioning.

"Having worked on both sides of the table, I've seen firsthand how powerful it can be when marketing, communications and business strategy come together," said Stoll. "Hewes has a long track record of delivering tangible results for investment firms in the media, across the industry and beyond, and I'm excited to bring my perspective to that work."

The ETF Boom and the Need for Specialized Strategy

To understand the strategic imperative behind this hire, one must look at the explosive, hyper-competitive nature of the modern ETF landscape. Launching an ETF is no longer a novelty; it is a crowded, high-stakes endeavor where differentiation is notoriously difficult to achieve.

During her tenure as Vice President of Marketing at Goldman Sachs, Stoll was instrumental in advising asset managers who were launching products through the Goldman Sachs ETF Accelerator platform. In this capacity, her mandate extended far beyond traditional promotional tactics. She was deeply involved in the foundational positioning, overarching branding, and comprehensive go-to-market strategies required to ensure these new vehicles didn't simply launch into a void.

This level of specialized go-to-market expertise is precisely what asset managers are now demanding from their external partners. The days of relying solely on earned media placements are over. Today’s asset allocators, wealth managers, and financial advisors consume information across a fragmented digital ecosystem. Consequently, communications firms must orchestrate sophisticated, multi-channel campaigns that seamlessly weave together thought leadership, social and digital strategy, and paid activation consulting.

Stoll’s deep roots in this specific sector—further evidenced by her role on the Southern California Chapter Leadership Committee of Women in ETFs—equip her to navigate this multifaceted environment. Her early career experience at ETF Trends (now VettaFi) and Craft & Capital laid the groundwork for a holistic understanding of how investment management clients interact with media relations and business development.

A Broader Blueprint for Agency Evolution

Stoll’s arrival in Los Angeles is not an isolated event, but rather a calculated component of a broader operational momentum at the firm. Founded more than thirty years ago, the agency has spent the past year aggressively modernizing its leadership structure and expanding its geographic footprint.

Earlier this year, the firm named Tyler Bradford and Steve Schaefer as Managing Partners, a transition that coincided with the appointment of Tony Denninger as Chief Operating Officer. This restructuring was explicitly designed to prioritize investments in capabilities that strengthen strategic guidance for their exclusive roster of asset managers, ETF issuers, and wealth managers.

"Our job has always been to make sure our clients' voices are heard and respected by those in the investment world who matter most to their success," Bradford stated. "Julia's asset management marketing experience and long-standing industry relationships will bring a fresh perspective that will help us strengthen our client programs."

By anchoring Stoll in Los Angeles, the firm is also solidifying its West Coast presence, ensuring that it remains physically and strategically proximate to the growing hub of financial innovation outside the traditional Wall Street corridor. This geographic expansion mirrors the broader decentralization of the financial services industry, where critical decisions are increasingly made in diverse hubs across the country.

Redefining the Value of Financial Communications

Ultimately, the intersection of innovation and human impact in finance requires a new playbook. As financial systems become more complex, the burden of translating that complexity into actionable, accessible language becomes heavier. The firms that will thrive in this new era are those that recognize communications not as an afterthought, but as an integral, embedded component of the product lifecycle.

When organizational silos are dismantled, the resulting synergy allows for a much more authentic and resonant narrative. Asset managers can no longer afford to have their product teams speaking a different language than their public relations representatives. The market is simply too noisy, and investor attention is far too scarce.

By aggressively pursuing talent that possesses deep, internal operational knowledge, communications agencies are redefining their own value proposition. They are transforming from mere megaphones into essential strategic partners, capable of guiding a product from its initial conceptualization all the way to its successful adoption by institutional allocators and retail advisors alike. This holistic approach represents the future blueprint for how the modern financial world will build, market, and sustain its most critical innovations.