Prosperity taps Forvis Mazars wealth leader as president

Prosperity's appointment of Jeff Lenhart as president extends the wealth talent war moving to the C-suite into the tax-adjacent RIA channel, pulling the former Southeast regional leader of Forvis Mazars' national wealth management business across accounting-firm-affiliated platforms to succeed Michele Martin, who remains with the firm.

Lenhart, a CFP professional with an Accredited Asset Management Specialist designation, drove regional growth, advanced digital capabilities, and developed integrated client solutions at Forvis Mazars, after earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and a master's in personal financial planning from the College for Financial Planning. "Prosperity has thoughtfully developed a holistic, national wealth management firm," he said. "I'm thrilled to be charged with expanding on the success of Michele and her team." Martin, for her part, said Lenhart has "the background and client relationship skills to take Prosperity even further."

Prosperity manages more than $5 billion in assets under management and runs as an RIA under the EisnerAmper umbrella, wrapping wealth planning, investment management, and tax services into one offering. Lenhart's move is a switch between two accounting-firm-affiliated wealth platforms, a sign that the tax-integrated RIA model has become a talent pool in its own right; a CFP who can talk tax, investments, and planning in one conversation is the full-service advisor accounting firms have been building toward.

The hire lands amid a broader 2026 leadership wave: days earlier, Mercer named Thomas Cannataro, a BlackRock veteran with more than 20 years of experience, as its US wealth management leader; this month also brought Kelly Apple to Kestra Financial as head of wealth management, Chris Peary to US Bank as chief private banking officer, and a DWS veteran to Barings' US wealth push, while Goldman Sachs and BNY earlier this year announced sweeping leadership refreshes across their wealth divisions.

With the Prosperity move, the C-suite war has moved beyond custody and platform engineering into the tax-adjacent corner of the RIA market, where integrating CPA services and investment management is the growth play. When an accounting firm's wealth arm loses a regional leader to a rival platform, the recruiting market is pricing the tax-and-wealth bundle rather than the assets alone, the same calculus that has CPA firms buying or building RIA platforms of their own, and one that will only intensify as the 2026 refresh continues.