Scott Garcia

President

Scott Garcia has been helping clients protect their nest eggs and plan for an abundant future for more than 30 years. The founder of Premier Estate & Income Planning was born in South St. Louis City. He attended Affton High School and received a full-ride baseball scholarship to Central Methodist College in Fayette, MO.

At an early age, Scott experienced how one of life’s curveballs can take you off course. Three weeks into baseball practice, at age 18, he was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer and told he had only three weeks to live. Luckily, his treatment worked and after two years of it, he was able to return to school. While training to requalify for his scholarship, Scott entered the financial services industry with Banker’s Life and Casualty. That was in 1986.

He enjoyed immediate success and was honored as the St. Louis Agent of the Year for six years in a row, beginning his first year. He was recruited into management for the company and remained there loyally for 17 years.

When he saw an opportunity to return to working with clients one-on-one to help them prepare for their financial futures, he founded the company that led to Premier Estate & Income Planning so he could operate independently and bring the best of all product solutions available to his clients. Over his career, he has helped more than 1,000 clients protect their financial futures.

Licensed in Missouri and Illinois, Scott truly loves helping people and changing their lives for the better.

Our Team of Strategic Partners

Andrew Victor

Vice President | Director of Planning Strategies

Andrew Auchincloss Victor has more than 24 years of experience in financial services. He specializes in strategies for Tax-efficient Income Planning, Wealth Transfer, Estate Planning, Business Succession and Insurance Planning. Victor supports advisors by presenting to their clients (and clients’ attorneys and accountants) complex and comprehensive solutions through succinct yet actionable guidance.

• Harvard graduate
• 24 years of experience in financial services
• Consults on risk and tax mitigation strategies with a focus on lifetime income

Noell Holmberg

Director of Life Insurance

Noell’s experience as a medical surgery nurse, specializing in cardiology and neurology, gives her invaluable credibility when working with underwriters. Her persuasive advocacy results in insurers green-lighting client cases they may have otherwise denied. And her experience in handling jumbo life cases, whether $65 million or $450 million, adds even greater value to advisors and their high-net-worth clients.

Shauna Wekherlien

Tax Goddess

Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, MTax, CTC, CTS, Tax Goddess is a highly sought-after Certified Public Accountant and founder of Tax Goddess Business Services, PC, established 2004. Tax Goddess is a global team of 65+ specialists that uses plain language (not tax code) to help business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs create plans of action to increase the business owner’s bottom line, reduce costs, significantly reduce taxes, increase cash flow, and perform what-if scenario options so that owners know what decisions to make and which paths are best suited to their particular situation.

Stacy Pearson

Universal Guardian Trust

Stacy brings an incredible background where she has legislated and advocates for individuals who have no voice. She has also spoken multiple times at the United Nations which brings a very unique perspective to our team approach. Stacy wears many hats at any given time and works directly with our Advisor Partners on training and mentoring them with amazing success to grow their business. Her personal style and professionalism stand apart from what most Advisors have experienced in this competitive industry.

Veronica Hill

Financial Planning & Tax Mitigation

In 1999 Veronica began her career in the financial sector on the securities side of the industry where she was Series 7 and Series 65 licensed. She moved to the life insurance side of the industry in 2005, working for a brokerage agency. Her journey on the life insurance side began in underwriting, assisting agents and their clients with obtaining the best possible offers by working hand in hand with the underwriters throughout the underwriting process.  She then moved to the marketing side of the business, where she has been assisting agents by helping them to determine what is best suited for their clients based on both financial and medical information on hand.

Greg Agnos

Tactical Tax and Estate Planning

Greg started his financial services career in 1987 as a floor broker at the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

He’s a former speaker and trainer for hundreds of companies throughout the country, working with advisors from Primerica Financial Services, New York Life, and Prudential to name a few.

He now specializes in Estate Planning and Business Development for ePIC Services Company. He was a member of the 1984 Rose Bowl team for University of Illinois Fighting Illini. As an athlete, Greg spends his free time staying fit, enjoying the outdoors, and traveling.

Jennifer Surmacz

Chief Counsel

In her role, Jennifer uses her experience in Estate Planning, Probate, Contracts, and other legal disciplines to review each eStatePlan™ file and collaborate with the eStatePlan™ team to ensure compliance with the client’s goals, objectives, and wishes. She works with client’s to review finished documents for approving their efficacy, suitability, and accuracy.

As a network attorney for eStatePlan™ Ciara Lister believes in three key pillars: planning, preparation, and prevention. A full-scholarship graduate of Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Fla., Lister began her law career as a Commercial Insurance Litigator in Boca Raton. She began seeing clients and her close friends struggle with the negative effects of probate proceedings, from dwindling inheritances to families destroyed by battles over money. This motivated her to change her focus to Estate Planning so she could help people avoid these issues before it was too late, rather than perform legal triage when the damage to families and their legacies had already been done.

Holly Halweg is the Onboarding Specialist at ePIC Services Company. Married to a financial advisor, she understands the needs of individuals and families planning for retirement, dealing with tax matters, and estate planning. As parents of a child with special needs, Holly and her husband engaged in volunteer work at their son’s preschool, designed for children with physical and developmental issues, including those on the autism spectrum.

Originally from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Holly attended the University of TX in Austin, initiating her career in the group medical insurance sector. Following marriage, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay area in California, and her family now resides in Boise, Idaho.