Morgan Stanley Taps Crawley as HR Chief, Names New Private Wealth Head

Morgan Stanley is shuffling ranks of its senior leadership and has tapped private wealth management head Mandell Crawley to be chief human resources officer, according to a memo from chief executive James Gorman.

Crawley, who spent his entire 28-year career at Morgan Stanley and ran private wealth since 2017, will take on his new role on February 1 and will join Morgan Stanley’s 18-person operating committee, the memo said. He replaces Jeff Brodsky, a 34-year company veteran who will become a vice chairman of Morgan Stanley advising on “executive talent, succession, and diversity and inclusion,” according to the memo.

Brodsky will continue to lead the firm’s COVID-19 response and help with the integration of new employees from its acquisition last year of E*Trade Financial Corp. and its pending purchase of Eaton Vance Corp., Gorman said.

Another career Morgan Stanley veteran, Elizabeth Dennis, will replace Crawley as head of private wealth management at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, according to a separate memo from Vince Lumia, head of field management. The private wealth unit includes around 500 advisors working with clients who have $20 million or more in assets.

Dennis, who spent all of her 19-year career at the firm, according to her company biography, will also retain her current responsibilities as head of strategic client management helping to market investment banking and capital markets services as well as private offerings to wealthy clients.

“Liz has broad experience in Global and Wealth Management Capital Markets and in managing SCM she has worked closely with both PWM and International Wealth Management (IWM) over a number of years,” Lumia wrote in the memo. “I am confident that she will build on the existing momentum across this broader portfolio of businesses and responsibilities.”

Dennis started as an analyst on the debt syndicate desk in 2001 and focused on underwriting for 14 years before moving to the wealth management division in 2015 to manage its capital markets business. She took on the head of strategic client management role the following year as Morgan Stanley folded its wealth management trading business into its broader capital markets.

Crawley, who is 45 and started at Morgan Stanley as an intern on a municipal bond sales desk, ascended the ranks to serve in several high profile roles at the company and in the wealth division in recent years. He was chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley before taking on the private wealth role and previously headed national business development at the wealth unit. 

“Mandell’s management and leadership skills, and his deep and broad experience across many key areas of our firm, make him ideally suited to lead Human Resources at Morgan Stanley,” Gorman wrote in the memo.