HISTORY
In 2003, we created Wharton Gladden to address the growing need for capital and strategic advice for micro, small and middle market companies. The Firm’s partners began growing the trust of institutional and high-net-worth investors when it successfully entered the marketplace as a whole loan-trading group. Wharton Gladden assisted institutions and individuals with acquiring and liquidating a wide range of securitized residential and commercial mortgage portfolios. We quickly recognized other prospects that were in need of additional options for securing capital. One year later, Wharton Gladden began to establish a presence in the Southeast to serve a growing diversified client base. The popularity of the Firm has grown, and so has our passion to provide clients with the most effective solutions.
FOUNDING PARTNERS
Irene Wharton and Frank Gladden are well-known for serving and building relationships in the community. They became widely recognized on the streets of Winston-Salem, NC for their munificence toward the homeless and disenfranchised citizens. They leveraged natural principles such as love and humility to conquer challenges, achieve goals and build a legacy. From those principles, we have given birth to Wharton Gladden & Company, a firm that is anchored by fundamental values such as honesty and integrity. We are committed to building relationships in the community, and furthermore, we are dedicated to the proliferation of our founding principles.
Irene Wharton
Frank Gladden
PRINCIPLE CENTERED FIRM
We are not interested in transactions. The culture of our firm calls on us to focus on relationship building and not order taking. We are genuinely interested in our clients, our desire to provide effective solutions is authentic and supersedes our desire to make a profit. We are driven to build win-win relationships.
We maintain a proactive state and ready to make quick decisions upon noticing problems. Our proactivity is demonstrated by addressing problems with our clients early in the process to avoid delays in performing our expected service. In between stimulus and the proper response, there are critical decisions that have to be made,
We cultivate and nurture creativity. We value the output of our team and their ideas help us improve processes and systems, create strategies to grow profits, implement new methods of showing our clients how much we appreciate their business, and most importantly, they help us find better ways to serve our clients. Creativity is the lifeblood of a successful company.
After evaluating our clients, we logically analyze their needs and structure solutions based on a longstanding industry knowledge and experience. Our strong and unique ability to approach our clients’ needs from a logical paradigm strengthens our relationships with capital partners and thus enables us to deliver unparalleled value.
Our clients expect us to “mean what we say” and “do what we say we are going to do” and we do not make decisions that will jeopardize our credibility and character, and we earn the trust of our clients. We adhere to our ethics and principles while making decisions that will not compromise our integrity.
We will always be honest with our clients even it means us losing a transaction. To be authentic to the relationship and to be dishonest are not congruent. Our philosophy requires a firm connection to reality and honesty is a byproduct of a company with a strong reality focus.
We live in a changing environment, and the marketplace is just as dynamic as the changes in our culture. Companies must have a foundation of principles to be effective in our knowledge-based economy. Without principles, organizations are reactive to change and not responsive, but our principle-centered firm prioritizes “service above self”. We offer clients a high level of proactivity, a win-win relationship, we consistently practice honesty and integrity, and we never take advantage of our most treasured resources; our clients, capital and credibility. We aggressively compete in our industry by utilizing a logical-thinking method of evaluating our clients’ needs while being creativity when structuring solutions.
