About Mark Philibosian
The Person on Your Side of the Table
For my entire career, I've been the person clients trust to sit on their side of the table and get complex things done right.
Why I do this
A job you never trained for, at the hardest possible time
Being named a successor trustee usually means inheriting a flood of institutions to contact, documents to assemble, accounts to marshal, and decisions that all seem to need answers at once. What I bring to that moment is a career built around exactly this kind of work — being the person a client can hand something complicated to and trust it will be handled competently, thoroughly, and with their best interests at the center of every decision.
"We know the course so you don't have to."
The Fairway Trust Support Promise
A background built for every part of the process
Trust administration touches almost every domain of someone's financial life at once
Most people supporting trustees only cover one piece of it. My career has given me direct, credentialed experience across all of them.
Investments
I hold the CFA charter and spent years in institutional asset management at BlackRock — giving me a real, technical understanding of the investment accounts a trust often holds.
Real Estate
I'm a licensed real estate agent in Santa Barbara. When a trust holds real property, I understand appraisals, comps, disclosures, and the sale process firsthand — not secondhand.
Complex Project Management
My MBA from UCLA Anderson (top 2% of my class) and over a decade at EY leading large, multi-workstream transformation engagements taught me how to run exactly the kind of multi-institution, multi-deadline process that trust settlement demands.
A bit more about me
Santa Barbara roots, a global perspective
I grew up in Goleta and have deep roots in this community — something that matters when I'm working with local families through what's often a personal and emotional process, not just a transactional one. I studied in New Zealand and Hong Kong, and have since worked across India, Cambodia, Australia, and Bangladesh — experience that's given me a genuine comfort operating amid complexity, ambiguity, and unfamiliar systems, wherever they show up. I've also worked internationally with the nonprofits COAF and ATEC, work that shaped how I think about service, responsibility, and showing up for people during difficult circumstances.
Important to know
What I am — and what I'm not
I'm not an attorney, CPA, or licensed fiduciary, and nothing I do replaces the advice of the trustee's own legal and tax counsel. Those professionals typically bill by the hour — which can make costs unpredictable and, in some cases, create little incentive to move quickly. I work differently: for a fixed fee, agreed to upfront, which means my incentive is aligned with getting the trust settled efficiently, not with running the clock. I work as administrative support to the trustee, at their direction — helping them execute their responsibilities efficiently and with a clear paper trail, while they retain full decision-making authority and legal responsibility for the trust.
Not sure where to start?
If you've recently been named a successor trustee, I'd be glad to talk through what the process actually looks like. No obligation, no jargon.