Please join us in welcoming
Donald (not “Don”) Sienkiewicz,
(pronounced “sin-KEH-vitch”)
As our new CK Resident

Throughout the evolution of Colman Knight, we periodically offer Residency programs to unique and aligned talent devoted to the financial planning profession. February 7, 2022, Donald joined Colman Knight for a year in training to gain direct experience in our field. Unlike previous Residents and Interns, Donald arrives with a depth of experience, maturity (a touch of gray hair), and unique wisdom to share.

Donald reached out to Gayle a little over a year ago in the midst of Covid by way of Emily’s fiancé expressing interest in the Integral Wealth methodology of our financial planning practice. After several communications and meetings throughout the year, we felt and saw the synergy and alignment in our views on client service, fiduciary standards, business integrity and life meaning.

Donald’s Residency training and accountabilities will be concentrated in Tax Planning and Preparation, Investment Integrity, Life Legacy, Financial Flows and daily photo of Nagog Pond. In these areas, you can expect to receive relevant communication as he becomes familiar and well-practiced in the work.

As you read his bio and personal introduction, we are confident you will see his talent and the synergy we are experiencing working with him. Please enjoy his written introduction and look forward to his connections and communications as pertinent to your planning.

Dear Colman Knight clients,

I’m looking forward to meeting you. Until then, here are a few things you might like to know about me:

I like to be called Donald, not Don. My last name, Sienkiewicz, is not as tough to pronounce as it looks, as long as you don’t try to say it while you’re looking at it! Phonetically, it’s “sin-KEH-vitch.” But really—“Donald” is fine.

I grew up in Washington, D.C. and came to Boston for college, and later, law school, which I graduated from in 2002. I’ve lived in southern New Hampshire for almost seventeen years. I started out in commercial real estate, but switched to trusts and estate planning during the Great Recession, and have practiced in that area for the past decade, during which I have owned the Estate Preservation & Planning Law Office in Amherst, New Hampshire. I have been married to an amazing woman, Katja (same last name—what a brave gal) since 1996 and we have four wonderful children: Ellie (23, finishing up a degree in elementary education and planning to save the world by teaching in under-resourced urban schools), Elias (21, a sophomore in college, and a lover of rowing, Nordic skiing, cars, and motorcycles), Davina (19, on a gap year, nannying for a couple of kids out in the Bay Area, and looking forward to backpacking around Europe for a couple of months before September), and Jana (17, a high school junior and darn good soccer and basketball player, but planning to skip college for the opportunity to found an environmentally-sensitive building design and construction company with her mother right out of high school.)

A few years ago, I learned about holistic financial planning. Honestly, I had viewed the entire financial “advice” industry with a great deal of suspicion, but when I realized there was a tiny band of true planners (as opposed to product salespeople) who took a fiduciary view of their work and based their advice on clients’ entire financial situations, the resonance was immediate. I started studying financial planning, and in the fall of 2020 I passed the CFP® exam and became a Certified Financial Planner™.

I had been searching for an entry point into the profession for about three years. I knew I didn’t want to go to Fidelity, a Wall Street firm, or one of the giant retail outfits like Edward Jones or Ameriprise. I wouldn’t find a culture I connected with at places like that—nor would I be given space to explore my interests, which include environmentally—and socially-responsible investing, deepening clients’ and my own understanding of “what is this money really FOR?”, and helping evolve our shared notions of money as a technology that has its own embedded values and imperatives, but which could be reimagined as a technology to support human thriving.

I was sitting by a fire in a friend’s backyard one evening a little over a year ago, voicing these desires, and he said “Wow—you ought to talk to the folks my fiancée (you know her—Emily Thomas) works with down in Acton, Massachusetts. They seem to have a really unique approach to financial planning.” It took nearly a year after that, but eventually I found myself sitting in a coffee shop with Gayle. In that conversation, we both found ourselves voicing some of our deepest hopes for what we might be allowed to devote the rest of our working lives to. There were even a few tears on both sides, and I knew that if an opportunity arose to work with Colman Knight, I had to take it.

That’s the short story. I’m hoping you and I have many years to get to know each other. If it helps open our conversation, I can also tell you that I enjoy walking in the woods (alone and with friends), hunting, fishing (salt, fresh, bait, flies—any kind, really), skiing (flat and steep), pond skating, mountain biking, admiring other peoples’ vegetable gardens, listening to live acoustic music, and watching Katja and our children flourish, stumble, overcome— basically, just watching them enact their own destinies.

Warm Regards,

Donald

Affiliations, Experience, Honors

• Certified Financial Planner™
• New Hampshire Bar Association Board of Governors, 2016–2022
• Member, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, 2010–2012
• Member, New Hampshire Bar Association Trusts & Estates Section
• Attorney, Rath, Young & Pignatelli, P.C., Concord, NH 2005–2009
• Associate, Goodwin Procter LLP, Boston, MA 2003–2004
• Massachusetts Land Court, Law Clerk to Chief Justice Peter W. Kilborn, Boston, MA 2002–2003
• NH Bar Association Leadership Academy, 2010–2011
• Director, Greater Manchester Homebuilders Association, 2009–2011
• Trustee, Pine Hill Waldorf School, 2008–2010
• Rappaport Honors Program in Law and Public Service, 2001

Admitted in Massachusetts (2002) New Hampshire (2005)

Education

Northeastern University School of Law
J.D., May 2002

Boston University
B.A. Magna Cum Laude, Economics May 1994
B.A. Magna Cum Laude, Environmental Policy May 1994