Some firms are built on credentials. Ours was built on a life.
Birch Point exists because two people spent twenty years practicing the philosophy behind it — and eventually built a firm around what they learned.
Brie & David Pio — Rockport, Maine
Twenty years of living the work-optional philosophy.
David and Brie met in Chicago in 2004 and have spent the two decades since making every major decision the same way — together, intentionally, and with a clear sense of what they were building toward. Early in their marriage they made a quiet commitment: live below their means, invest in the future, and design life around what actually mattered. That meant real sacrifices at times. It also meant real freedom — the kind that compounds.
They’ve taken sabbaticals when it made sense, supported each other through career pivots and lean years, and moved across the country twice in pursuit of the life they wanted. After nearly a decade in Los Angeles, they chose Midcoast Maine — smaller, slower, rooted — to raise their family. Brie launched Birch Point shortly after. David eventually stepped away from a twenty-five-year real estate career deliberately and on his own terms, used the time to think deeply about what a well-designed second half of life actually looks like, and joined the firm in early 2024.
They’ve essentially been practicing work-optional thinking their entire marriage. Not because everything came easily, but because the choices they made — consistently, sometimes at real cost — kept optionality in their future. That experience isn’t incidental to what they do at Birch Point. It’s the foundation of it.
Both pursuing MBAs simultaneously — different programs, same finish line.
Moved to Los Angeles. Started a family.
Left California for Midcoast Maine. Brie founded Birch Point.
David stepped away from institutional real estate. Built a boat. Became a Maine Guide.
David joined Birch Point. The firm became what it is today.
A place near home.
An idea we return to every day.
Birch Point State Park sits a few miles from their home on the Midcoast — a quiet stretch of rocky shoreline where the tree line meets the water and the view opens up in every direction. When Brie was naming the firm, it felt right immediately.
A birch tree is resilient and adaptive — often the first to take root after disruption, the one that prepares the ground for everything that follows. A point is a place of arrival, a vantage from which the landscape becomes clear. Together, the words describe the transition Birch Point exists to help clients navigate: to a chapter where the view finally opens up.
Founder & Lead Financial Planner
Brie started Birch Point because she had something to prove — not to the industry, but to herself.
She grew up in Ohio in a household where financial stress was a constant undercurrent. Her father worked hard in manufacturing and faced multiple layoffs — periods that meant sacrifice and the particular anxiety of a family navigating without a map. Her parents were good, loving people. What they lacked wasn’t character — it was a compass.
What Brie absorbed from those years wasn’t bitterness. It was a fierce desire for something different: control, clarity, and the ability to make choices freely. That conviction drove her through her MBA, through early finance roles at Jackson National Asset Management and Abacus Wealth Partners in Los Angeles, through years of study and practice, to the CFP® designation and eventually to building a firm of her own.
Brie’s approach is personal in the truest sense. She doesn’t believe in templates. She believes in understanding the specific person in front of her and building a plan precise enough to actually get them there. She keeps her focus entirely on what can be done from here — on the decisions and opportunities ahead, not what can’t be changed about the past.
Outside the office, Brie is usually reading, skiing, or outdoors with the family. She has a deep appreciation for comedy and a low tolerance for unnecessary complexity.
David’s path to Birch Point ran through twenty-five years of building things.
His career moved from community design and land planning to acquisitions, operations, and eventually running a $1 billion student housing platform at M&A Real Estate Partners — where he built an institutional brand called The Hive from the ground up. He holds an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and an undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois.
When David stepped away from institutional real estate in 2023, he used the time deliberately. He built a wooden boat. He became a Registered Maine Guide. He read deeply about longevity, purpose, and what the second half of life looks like when it’s designed well. Those questions turned out to be ones he couldn’t put down — and exactly what Birch Point was built to answer.
David joined the firm in early 2026. He runs the operational side and brings a systems, strategy, and hospitality lens to the client experience. He serves on the board of Homeworthy, a Midcoast Maine organization focused on alleviating homelessness.
COO
The beliefs behind the work.
The second half is not a winding down.
It’s a different kind of chapter — one that requires as much intention as the first half, but a different kind of intention. The people who live it best arrive with a plan, not just a portfolio.
Financial planning is a relationship, not a transaction.
Built on trust, candor, and a genuine understanding of what the person across the table actually wants their life to look like.
Getting there and staying there are two different problems.
Making work optional is a financial achievement. Sustaining it well — through market cycles, changing tax laws, health events, and life transitions — requires an ongoing plan and a partner who stays on top of it.
There is no single right answer.
There are good frameworks, honest conversations, and plans built around real lives. The point is precision — a plan built around your specific situation, not a template.
First-half choices determine second-half freedom.
The choices made with care and intention in the first half of life genuinely determine the freedom available in the second. That’s not a tagline. It’s what David and Brie have lived — and what they bring to every client relationship.
Rockport, Maine. On purpose.
They live in Rockport, a small town on the Midcoast with a working harbor, a real community, and the kind of access to the outdoors they moved here specifically for. They have two kids. They know their neighbors. When they’re not working, they’re hiking, skiing, sailing, or finding excuses to be on the water.
Want to know if we’re the right fit?
A no-obligation conversation about your situation and what a work-optional future could look like for you.
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