Movers & Shakers: Christina Boyd, Merrill Lynch managing director, senior financial adviser

Christina Boyd, a Merrill Lynch managing director and senior financial adviser, followed in her father's footsteps professionally but is second to none in the field after ­Barron's named her the state's top financial adviser.

Boyd, of Boyd, Bencini, Gibbons & Associates in Wayzata, advises high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families and works with corporations and small businesses on employee retirement plans.

Boyd, who often spent Saturdays charting equities in her father's Merrill Lynch office, now follows 300 companies and favors investing in individual stocks, according to Barron's.

"I do a tremendous amount of research," she said in an interview. "That's what really helps with our performance and making sure people are on track with their goals."

Boyd works to educate clients, from employees of companies whose retirement plans she is handling to clients who have lost spouses. She also advises clients who are selling businesses, retiring, going through a divorce or making other transitions.

She recently served as co-chair of the Children's Star Gala, which raised more than $2 million for Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

Boyd is a graduate of Colorado State University and joined Merrill Lynch in 1996. In 2015, Barron's magazine named her one of the Top 100 Women Financial Advisors in the country for the ninth consecutive year.

A: I learned to keep it simple: Don't buy anything you don't understand. … I spend a lot of time on research and the rest meeting with or talking on the phone with existing clients or potential clients to discuss their needs and goals. That's what sets me apart. That's what I learned from my dad.

Q: What's your approach to investing?

A: I tend to like to focus on really large-cap, often megacap blue chip stocks often that yield high dividends. What I'm really focused on now is companies that yield dividends and that are consistently raising their dividends because those are going to outperform in a rising-interest-rate environment and at some point we're going to get there.

Q: To what do you attribute Barron's recognition as the state's top financial adviser?

A: Having an outstanding group of people who work on our team and also wonderful, loyal clients. … We keep our fees very competitive. We pride ourselves on offering the highest level of service. If you look at long-term track records, we consistently beat the various indexes, but, more importantly, we take far less risk than the overall market.