Forgemark Private Wealth
Business Operations

Dustin Rippetoe

Tax strategist for life’s transitions.

Dustin Rippetoe, VP of Business Operations

Every day of my life has been attached to small business.

VP of Business Operations · MBA, CEPA

He grew up in one. An MBA at Oklahoma Christian, interning as a criminal investigative analyst at the IRS along the way, then graduate coursework at the Wharton School. Since then: a commodities-driven hedge fund, advisory firms, startups, venture capital — then he built, ran, and sold his own.

Dustin has sat on every side of the owner’s table except the one that pretends it’s simple. There is always another venture cooking, or another owner being backed. That habit is what the work runs on.

The seam he works

A transition is a tax event before it is anything else.

A company sold, a parent’s estate settled, a property that changes hands, a career that ends — each one arrives as a decision, and each one carries a tax consequence that was set long before the decision got made.

Dustin builds the strategy around the transition itself, so the structure is in place while there is still time for it to matter — not after the closing, when the options have already narrowed to one.

The operation behind the table

As VP of Business Operations he runs the machinery behind Forgemark: the process, the standards, and the coordination that keep tax, legal, risk, and property working from one plan instead of four. What a client sees is a single accountable name. What makes that possible is the operation underneath it.

Coordination, not products

The right specialist on each piece, briefed against the same plan, on a schedule rather than a scramble. Forgemark coordinates the professionals; it does not replace them.

Credentials

An MBA from Oklahoma Christian University, with graduate coursework at the Wharton School. He holds the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) designation from the Exit Planning Institute — the credential built around owners approaching the largest transaction of their lives.

Off the clock

The short version.

Kidney transplant recipient. Husband of twenty-five years and counting. Father of one giant of a son. Always barefoot.

← Back to the team