Amy James is a seasoned financial services professional and senior licensed Independent Registered Representative with nearly two decades of experience at some of the most respected firms on Wall Street. With an institutional-level pedigree as a Registered Representative, Amy holds her FINRA Series 7 and Series 63 licenses and brings to her clients deep institutional knowledge and a client-first approach. Located in California, she is a Managing Partner and Founder of Laguna Venture Partners.
Throughout her career, Amy has held senior leadership and strategic relationship roles at State Street Global Advisors, JPMorgan Asset Management, VanEck Global, BlackRock, and Barclays Global Investors, where she specialized in ETF distribution, client partnership management, and investment solutions across independent broker-dealers, private banking firms, and major wealth management platforms. Most notably, at JPMorgan Asset Management she was instrumental in growing the ETF business from $1 billion to over $50 billion in assets under management through strategic partnerships, enhanced market penetration, and the successful launch of their active ETF suite.
Now focused on serving ultra-high-net-worth families and institutional clients, Amy brings the same institutional-level placement expertise in private investments that she has delivered throughout her career. She has a proven track record of negotiating and executing complex agreements with precision and is recognized for maintaining the highest standards of regulatory compliance across every aspect of her business. She is known for her consultative approach, her ability to simplify complex financial decisions, and her unwavering commitment to building trusted, long-term partnerships.
Amy holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Business from the University of California, Berkeley, and studied abroad at Saint Louis University in Madrid, Spain.