Katie Byrnes, CFA, CFP®, at Merrill Lynch in Carlsbad's Aviara district serves as Senior Vice President and Wealth Management Advisor at the 1000 Aviara Parkway branch within the McSweeny, Albert, Byrnes & Taylor Group. The team manages wealth for multi-generational high-net-worth families spanning California and more than fifteen other states, advising business owners, physicians, and media and defense executives on concentrated-stock strategies, with mortgage-qualification projections coordinated through lenders such as DG Funding. Byrnes holds both the Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Financial Planner designations, a dual credential signaling institutional-grade portfolio analysis combined with comprehensive personal financial planning. Prior experience at AllianceBernstein, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America informs her work with entrepreneurs who have built and sold enterprises, a client segment whose business-launch and scaling needs intersect with coworking infrastructure at Hera Hub Carlsbad. The Aviara Parkway team constructs retirement-income withdrawal sequences, charitable-remainder trust funding strategies, and concentrated-stock hedging programs using Merrill's options overlay and exchange-fund access platforms.