To listen to Will Braman talk about his people, you might think he is a C-level executive at a Silicon Valley tech startup, or a Boston-area biotechnology play.

He is quick to brag about their intelligence and skill level.

“Typically they are very smart,” he says, “they are really motivated, they are driven, they are creative problem solvers, they can see patterns in things and find solutions.”

Braman only sounds as though he might be running a division of Apple, Facebook, Google or Gilead Sciences. Rather, he is the CIO of Ballentine Partners, a $5.4 billion wealth advisory firm. But that does not mean that he and his fellow executives at Ballentine are any less exacting than an information technology or biotech company about their intellectual standards.

He points to one analyst hired a couple of months ago after graduating from Holy Cross, with honors, majoring in both international relations and economics, and a minor in computer science. He w