Alissa Hersch on Building Culture

For Alissa Hersch, culture isn’t just a slogan or a framed list of values — it’s the way people show up for one another, how you support someone or recognize them, how you make them feel valued or show them they belong.

That belief is just one reason Hersch was recognized as a Culture Carrier in the MAKERS Class of 2026. For her, the category immediately connected to something she’s believed in since childhood: Giving back is part of what gives meaning to success.

In high school, she remembers volunteering with young mothers, helping them navigate childcare and other resources that could make daily life more manageable. She remembers, too, the children who did not want to go home after school because no one was waiting for them there. It left an impression on her.

A Life Changing Trip to Africa

As the years went on, Hersch’s empathy continued to deepen. During a college study-abroad program in Africa, Hersch had what she still describes as one of the most transformative experiences of her life. For more than a month, she lived on the outskirts of the Maasai Mara, in a setting that was physically and culturally far removed from what she knew in the United States. While she had little of the convenience she had grown up with — limited internet, no running water, milk from local cows that had to be boiled first — what stayed with her through all these years is the generosity of the people around her.

Returning to the States after that trip made Hersch see her own life differently. The experience didn't leave her with grand visions of altruism, but it birthed a much more practical conviction: It doesn’t take much to make a difference, you just have to be willing. “If I’m not willing to give back and put in the effort to our community,” she thought, “then who am I to take from it?”

Those experiences stayed with her because they were clarifying. A few hours of time, a bit of care, a gesture of steadiness — those things could matter far more than people realized.

The Human Side of Finance

That same impulse toward curiosity and connection eventually shaped her career. Hersch’s father was a stockbroker, and she spent summers interning in the business. At home, her parents had already made investing feel tangible. Using her allowance and some birthday money, Hersch remembers purchasing her very first stocks — Disney and Nordstrom. And this was at a time when you still got paper certificates, which she hung up in her room.

Even then, it was not the markets that drew her in most, it was the human side. After a year abroad following college, she joined her father's group at Smith Barney as a sales assistant and began pushing the team toward planning work. That’s where her passion took hold: sitting with people, understanding what mattered most to them and helping them gain confidence in their future.

She stayed through the financial crisis and became part of Morgan Stanley when the firm acquired Smith Barney in 2009. Today she is an SVP, Financial Advisor in the Seattle office, one of five partners on the team.

A Truly Unique Team

About eight years ago, with her father nearing retirement and a firm belief that a team structure was the right way to serve clients, Hersch and her colleagues at Morgan Stanley began building a group that shared her values: collaborative, transparent, and not ego-driven. Her husband is part of that team, along with a tight-knit group of partners and colleagues whose paths had crossed and re-crossed over the years — one of them she had interned alongside as a high schooler. Hersch calls it the best accident that ever happened to them.

What makes it work, she says, is not that everyone agrees. It’s that people are willing to listen, challenge one another honestly and keep moving. The team has spent real time defining its mission, values and behaviors — not as a branding exercise, but as a living framework. They recognize one another publicly, they revisit the values in meetings and look for ways to reinforce them in everyday work.

Living the Values

“We didn’t want our values on a plaque,” Hersch says. “We wanted to live them.”

That idea extends well beyond her own team. Hersch is also a founding member of Women at Morgan Stanley (W@MS) in Seattle, an organization working to promote equitable opportunities for women across the Firm. What began locally grew into something much larger, with chapters across the country. For Hersch, it was all about connection — a way to give women in the industry a chance to find one another, share knowledge, open doors and make the path feel more navigable.

That belief in bringing people along shows up in her day-to-day work as well. Alongside mentoring the Client Service team, Hersch helps lead marketing efforts, runs a CPA networking group with her husband, supports founder advisory work for business owners, holds a position on the board of her daughter’s school, is an active volunteer at her son’s school, a community soccer coach and a member of both Impact Seattle 100 and Washington Women’s Foundation. The work is varied, but the throughline is consistent: Build trust, share what you know and create structures that help other people grow.

For Hersch, that is what culture really is. It is the cumulative effect of what people do for one another over time. It’s realizing that stepping in — whether for a client, for a colleague, or for a cause — is rarely a detour from the work. More often than not, it is the work.