Before he donned a suit and tie as a wealth manager, Christopher Stroup wore a hard hat, snake boots, safety glasses, fire-resistant clothing and a hydrogen sulfide monitor to work every day.
Working as a petroleum and gas engineer for Chevron on the oil fields of the San Joaquin Valley in California, Stroup's gear protected him from the hazards that come with working on wells and derricks all day.
"I was always oriented toward math and science. Those were my subjects that I loved the most," Stroup said. "And so getting into engineering was something where I always thought that's the path that I was going to go on."
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Growing up in the small Appalachian town of Troy, Pennsylvania during the shale gas boom in the early 2000s, with the largest natural gas basin in North America in his backyard, Stroup felt that going into petroleum and gas engineering would be a natural career path to follow.
Stroup started working at Chevron right out of college. The industry was thriving, with oil at $100 a barrel. But by the next year, Stroup said, it was down to $20 a barrel.
"I was fortunate to maintain my job, but there were friends of mine who weren't so lucky," Stroup said. "Through that experience I was looking at other jobs, other careers. How could I pivot into something else?"
Realizing that his specialty in petroleum engineering "pigeonholed" him in terms of career opportunities, Stroup started to consider alternate paths.
Revelations and a new trajectory
Meanwhile, changes in his personal life also pushed him to reconsider the trajectory he had been following.
Stroup had come out as gay a year after he moved to California to become an engineer. He soon realized he did not feel valued as an employee at Chevron or as a resident of the conservative town of Bakersfield.
"Very quickly into that, I had realized that wasn't going to work for me," Stroup said. "When I came out, I said that my authenticity was no longer negotiable. The Christopher outside of work needed to be the same Christopher at work."
So Stroup traveled back across the country to Philadelphia to earn his MBA from Drexel University and explore these newfound revelations about his professional and personal identities.
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When Stroup started his MBA, he wasn't sure what career path he wanted to pursue but knew he had an interest in finance. After reading a job posting for a private wealth advisor, Stroup saw an opportunity to combine his interests in finance, entrepreneurship and constant learning.
"When I looked at what pushed the happiness needle in my personal life, it was the relationships that I had, and so I wanted to be able to bring that factor into my career so that I could have fulfillment," Stroup said. "Our role as the advisor is very human-first, and being an advisor and moving into wealth management captured all those values that I wanted to make sure that I had in this next step of my career as an advisor."
Finding fulfillment, serving a community
After completing his MBA, Stroup started as an associate financial advisor at Santa Monica, California-based RIA
"Ultimately, I was loving what I was doing because I had the opportunity to work with clients that I enjoyed and loved — and at a firm that ultimately was allowing me to be Christopher," he said.
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Stroup's colleague at Abacus, financial advisor Kasey McManis, said that Stroup's engineering background helped him as an advisor.
"He's got that super quantitative focus, nerdy spreadsheet-math-guy kind of mindset," McManis said. "But he blends that with a great personal approach, great bedside manner and just an overservice kind of mentality toward his clients which I try to uphold as well."
At Abacus, Stroup advised entrepreneurs and individuals from the LGBTQ+ community. He spearheaded Abacus' Pride Month Pro Bono Financial Services, offering free financial consultations for LGBTQ+ clients.
"Christopher specifically is filling a really cool niche in that he's a gay advisor and he's got a background, a history and a knowledge of the queer community that, frankly, not that many advisors can bring to the table," McManis said. "So he's bringing to light and servicing a group of folks that I would say in the past were maybe underrepresented on the advisory front and definitely underserved on the client front."
In 2024, Stroup put out his own shingle in Santa Monica and opened
Stroup has partnered with
"Everyone deserves access to quality financial advice," Stroup said. "And so I want to be able to support and uplift the community that I'm a part of that honestly isn't necessarily getting the support that they need to help make quality financial decisions, and eliminate wealth gaps and things like that."
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As a proudly LGBTQ+ advisor, Stroup wants to be a role model for those who do not yet feel accepted within the industry.
"I think part of it is just trying to be a beacon for that, so that other advisors maybe have a safe space for them, or they feel comfortable taking that leap because they see other advisors who are open about their sexuality."
McManis is optimistic about Stroup's future, noting the impressive momentum of his career.
"He's made a tremendous amount of progress in a short amount of time," he said. "So it'll be cool to see what he's doing with his clients and his profession in a few years. I'm pretty excited for him."
In his own vision of the future, Stroup wants to draw on his entrepreneurial spirit to continue to support the LGBTQ+ community and entrepreneurs more broadly.
"When I think about my future, that's where I see it going: building more of a business or model around supporting that community, because that's where fulfillment and joy lives for myself as the advisor working in this industry," he said.
