Paul Uhlman spent 36 years helping an investment company reach its clients. In 2026, his assignment changed: he became responsible for the investment teams themselves. There is an appealing circularity to the move. Someone who began by answering clients’ questions now oversees the people whose work supplies many of the answers.
On April 30, he became president and chief executive officer of the Federated Advisory Companies, succeeding John Fisher. The remit covers Federated Hermes’ investment teams globally. For a career built inside the same organization since 1990, it was a substantial change of perspective without a change of employer.
A job title can conceal the distance traveled to acquire it. Uhlman’s route runs through account administration, trust sales, global accounts and institutional distribution. It includes an economics degree from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Columbia Business School. The recurring subject is the relationship between an investment organization and the people trusting it with money.
The telephone came first
His arrival at Federated was modest enough: account administrator and sales representative. The early promotion sequence gives the story its rhythm. Trust sales led to global accounts in 1999; senior vice president followed in 2004, national sales director for institutional sales in 2007, and executive vice president in 2010. The titles changed as the circle of clients widened.
By the time he was appointed to run Federated Securities Corp. in 2016, the institutional and retirement division he had led represented more than $60 billion in assets. Its clients included pension programs, endowments, foundations and government entities. These were organizations bringing different obligations to the same investment conversation. A pension plan and a foundation may both buy a fund; their calendars and commitments deserve separate explanations.
The 2016 appointment put four domestic sales units under his leadership: broker/dealer, wealth management and trust, institutional and retirement, and separately managed accounts. He succeeded Thomas Territ, another long-serving employee, with a transition period built into the handover. A business based on continuing relationships had arranged a succession that allowed people time to introduce the next person.
There is little glamour in the phrase “distribution arm.” It sounds like a warehouse attachment. In investment management, it describes the work of getting an organization’s capabilities understood, evaluated and used. Uhlman had spent decades learning that side of the business before taking responsibility for the whole domestic operation.
- 1990Account administration and sales
- 1999Sales director, global accounts
- 2016President, Federated Securities Corp.
- 2026President & CEO, Federated Advisory Companies
A sales career with an unexpected dividend
Uhlman grew up outside Philadelphia and came to Pittsburgh for university. His early sales work took him to Columbus, calling on Ohio trust companies and private banks, then back east and eventually to New York’s global banks. He has also declared his allegiance to the Penguins and Steelers. Pennsylvania geography apparently leaves room for negotiation.
He met his wife through a client lunch. In a 2021 conversation, he called meeting her the highlight of his sales career. Later, moving four children to Pittsburgh for his leadership role prompted a more rueful recollection: “I was not father of the year that year.” He credited the city’s welcome with easing the move.
Interview graphic: Pittsburgh Technology Council.
When the sales problem became a teaching problem
In 2021, a particular mismatch occupied Uhlman’s attention. Federated Hermes’ 2020 survey found that 90% of financial advisors were getting questions about environmental, social and governance investing. Fewer than 25% felt confident discussing it with clients. Curiosity had raced ahead of the ability to explain.
The company responded with its Responsible Investing Institute, launched in May 2021 with a three-course curriculum developed alongside KKS Advisors. The program covered introductory concepts, investment data and implementation in an advisory business. Education became part of the distribution work: give professionals a firmer grasp of the subject before expecting them to carry the conversation further.
The second bar marks the 25% boundary; the reported result was below it. Historical survey figures.
The gap is revealing because it concerns the intermediary. An investment manager can build a strategy, but a client’s understanding often depends on someone outside the investment team. A financial advisor has to connect terminology with a person’s priorities. Without that step, another fund and another acronym merely add furniture to an already crowded room.
This episode offers a concrete way to read Uhlman’s career. Sales leadership includes noticing where understanding breaks down. The institute addressed a specific obstacle with lessons rather than another product announcement. It also put a practical question at the center of a fashionable subject: can the person sitting opposite the client explain what is being offered?
The map grew larger
Uhlman’s distribution responsibilities also reached beyond the United States. In September 2019, UBS, Federated Investors and Hermes Investment Management announced SDG Engagement High Yield Credit funds. The structure linked high-yield bond investing with engagement involving the companies issuing those bonds. Separate US and international vehicles brought the strategy to different investor audiences.
His contribution to the announcement emphasized an existing UBS relationship and access through its worldwide advisor network. The details show what international distribution actually entails: investment capabilities, fund structures, local availability and a route to clients. “Global” looks wonderfully simple on a business card. Making the pieces work across borders requires rather more stationery.
The launch followed Federated’s 2018 acquisition of a majority interest in London-based Hermes Fund Managers. By 2023, when Clive Selman became international head of sales, Uhlman oversaw global distribution. Selman reported to him and took responsibility for sales across Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
That appointment extended a familiar pattern: promote an established colleague, broaden the remit and connect specialist teams with a larger set of clients. Uhlman described plans to expand sales and business development across those regions, including cooperation with the private-markets sales team. The work involved making the firm’s different capabilities available through a coordinated sales organization.
Read together, the UBS launch and the international sales appointment explain the distance between the domestic sales presidency he entered in 2016 and the global responsibilities that followed. His career accumulated a wider geography alongside a wider range of investment conversations. The next promotion would move him across the organization as well as up it.
The last sales conference
At the 2026 Global Sales Conference, Uhlman had a farewell of an unusual kind. He was remaining at the firm, but it would be his last conference as head of global distribution. He described the occasion as bittersweet and pointed to a 24-year working relationship with Bryan Burke, who would succeed him.
The conference theme was “Think bigger, move faster.” Its outgoing sales leader was preparing to do both with an organization he already knew. Burke, in turn, thanked Uhlman publicly for mentorship and friendship. Their exchange gives the succession a human scale: two colleagues with a long shared history arranging who would take responsibility next.
“Think bigger, move faster.”
The theme of Federated Hermes’ 2026 Global Sales Conference
Fisher became chairman of the Federated Advisory Companies, retaining involvement in strategic initiatives and client relationships. Burke took over global sales. Uhlman moved to investment oversight while continuing to report to Federated Hermes chief executive J. Christopher Donahue. Three assignments changed, with continuity built into the arrangement.
The corporate structure matters here. Uhlman leads the advisory companies within Federated Hermes; Donahue remains chief executive of the parent company. The distinction gives his new title its proper scale and shape. He has responsibility for investment teams across the business, while the firm retains a separate leader for global distribution.
Listening from the other side of the table
The board’s rationale for Uhlman’s 2026 nomination emphasized his long career, management experience and knowledge of institutional, retirement and retail clients. Its assessment placed client relationships alongside education and industry experience. In a career like his, those relationships are part of the qualification for broader responsibility.
His public comments after the transition have focused on supporting investment professionals and encouraging collaboration across specialties. Equities, fixed income, multi-asset, liquidity and alternatives sit within the remit. These teams bring different questions and methods to the business. Leading them requires room for that variety as well as a shared understanding of whom the work serves.
There is a practical tension in the new job. A distribution leader learns to organize around the questions clients bring. An investment leader also has to protect the time and independence required to do the research behind an answer. Those demands meet inside the same firm, sometimes on different schedules. Uhlman’s experience gives the appointment its particular interest: he reaches the investment organization after years of explaining its work to others.
His progression also offers an unusually long view of professional development. The first leadership assignment did not have to resemble the last one. Global accounts, institutional sales and domestic distribution each added a different set of responsibilities. By 2026, the accumulated experience was being applied to another part of the business. Staying with one employer had still required learning a succession of jobs.
The account administrator’s first responsibility was to respond when someone called. Thirty-six years later, Uhlman’s assignment is much larger, but that starting point gives the career a useful coherence. Investment decisions eventually arrive in somebody else’s plans: a retirement, an institution’s budget, an advisor’s conversation. He spent much of his working life close to that receiving end. Now he leads the teams whose decisions travel there.