Azzurra Missinato: Guiding Families Toward Financial Freedom
Anyone can be good at their job but Azzurra Missinato is rare. Her journey weaves together decades of deep expertise, relentless curiosity, and a genuine drive to make a lasting impact. Starting with over 10 years in academia at the University of Pittsburgh and the SBP Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, CA, Azzurra contributed to cutting-edge biotech research, helping advance therapies for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and PRKAG2 cardiac syndrome drugs that are now in clinical trials for muscle and heart diseases.
Her path then took her into entrepreneurship and finance, where she discovered how the wealthiest 5% of Americans grow and protect their money. This knowledge became her mission: to transform lives through financial empowerment, legacy-building, and smart wealth strategies. Azzurra approaches every consultation with care and authenticity, connecting deeply with clients to understand their goals before offering guidance.
What makes her truly rare is her combination of scientific rigor, financial insight, and human empathy. She doesn’t sugarcoat, she prioritizes with precision, and she teaches her clients to protect their families, build lasting wealth, and leave a meaningful legacy. Naturally introverted but purposefully engaging, Azzurra transforms every interaction into a blend of trust, clarity, and inspiration reminding everyone that while many can advise, only a few can truly guide.
A Personalized Approach to Risk-Free Financial Growth
Co-founded in early 2025 by Azzurra and Joseph Mubanga, a married couple and both licensed financial specialists, Mercury Legacy is dedicated to helping clients eliminate market risk, management fees, and taxes, enabling them to retain 30–40% more of their wealth. Based in San Diego, CA, the firm serves clients across 25 states nationwide.
Mercury Legacy’s approach is highly personalized, with a focus on the tax-free side of finance, which requires tailored consultation to meet each client’s unique goals. The firm is committed to helping families build stronger financial futures and has cultivated a team of 17 trained and mentored agents to support this mission.
Since its inception, Mercury Legacy has assisted over 25 families in protecting and growing their wealth tax-free and without market risk, with many more clients expected to benefit from its innovative, client-centered approach.
From Scientific Discovery to Financial Empowerment
Born and raised in Italy in a hardworking middle-class family, her mother a nurse and her father a truck driver Azzurra grew up with strong values, believing that love and respect are the foundation of everything. Family and friends remain central to her life.
Azzurra pursued biotechnology and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, becoming the first in her family to earn a doctorate. She dedicated over a decade to academia at the University of Pittsburgh and the SBP Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, CA, followed by five years in biotech at Avidity Biosciences, contributing to therapies now in clinical trials for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and PRKAG2 cardiac syndrome. Along the way, she trained students, led teams, and collaborated across institutions, honing her ability to motivate and inspire others.
In 2024, Azzurra shifted her focus to financial education and wealth management, co-founding Mercury Legacy with her husband, Joe Mubanga. Inspired by the strategies of the wealthiest 5% of Americans, she helps families protect their money, minimize taxes, and grow wealth responsibly. Azzurra approaches her work with authenticity, clarity, and a genuine passion for connecting with people.
Outside of work, Azzurra is an accomplished runner, completing over 25 half marathons and one full marathon, and a fitness enthusiast who enjoys outdoor workouts, track and field, and beach exercises. She loves cooking and baking, often experimenting without recipes, and maintains a healthy lifestyle with meditation and balanced nutrition. A fan of 90s pop and dance music, Azzurra is determined, action-oriented, and values living life with purpose.
She is also a devoted mother to her 7-year-old son and shares a life in San Diego with her husband Joe, a former professional soccer player from Zambia. Together, they combine their talents to educate and empower families nationwide through Mercury Legacy.
Committed to Integrity, Growth, and Empowering Others
Azzurra envisions Mercury Legacy growing exponentially over the next 5–8 years, expanding with a team of agents who share the company’s high ethical standards and commitment to helping others. She anticipates serving thousands of families and positioning the firm as a recognized leader invited to conferences, workshops, and networking events for its positive impact on clients’ financial futures.
To deliver exceptional service, Azzurra stays constantly informed about all financial products offered by Mercury Legacy as well as competitors’, ensuring each client receives the best-fit solution. She invests in daily personal and professional growth, exploring new products, leveraging AI tools, attending conferences, and fostering continuous learning within her team.
Azzurra believes that true leadership is rare. Beyond strategy and results, it requires authenticity, empathy, and example-setting. For her, leadership is about listening, guiding, and genuinely caring not merely chasing profits. Her goal is to inspire a team that is motivated, aligned, and confident, creating a culture where both clients and colleagues thrive.
Slowing Down, Connecting Deeply, and Building Lasting Financial Freedom
Azzurra believes in slowing down today’s fast-paced world to focus on what truly matters. She encourages people to prioritize fewer, meaningful activities that lead to deeper thinking, better results, and more purposeful living.
She is passionate about revealing how traditional financial systems often keep the middle class working indefinitely. By guiding clients toward a tax-free financial path, Azzurra helps them achieve genuine independence and long-term security.
Azzurra also values real human connections. She emphasizes meeting face-to-face over coffee or in person, believing that true conversations strengthen relationships and foster trust, something that social media alone cannot provide.
In her work, she meets each client to understand their unique situation and crafts personalized financial strategies rejecting any one-size-fits-all approach. Before any consultation, she ensures a genuine connection, which she considers essential to truly knowing how to help.
As a team leader, Azzurra ensures that every agent at Mercury Legacy meets high standards of knowledge and ethics before engaging with clients. The highlight of her day comes when clients feel excited, confident, and secure, knowing they can protect their families, grow wealth, and leave a lasting legacy.
Balance, Resilience, and Principles
Azzurra maintains a balanced lifestyle to support both body and mind. She engages in light daily workouts complemented by two intense sessions each week, and follows a diet rich in lean proteins, fiber, vegetables, and fruit, allowing herself one indulgent meal weekly, often enjoying authentic Italian pizza or pasta.
To nurture mental wellness, she meditates regularly and practices deep breathing techniques, helping her stay grounded and focused. As an entrepreneur, Azzurra has learned to prioritize, delegate, and give herself grace, understanding that not every task needs to be done immediately sometimes, finishing tomorrow is perfectly acceptable.
Her core values integrity, high standards, empathy, and authenticity guide every decision. Azzurra believes that challenges are inevitable, but what defines a person is how they respond: whether they use obstacles as excuses, or as motivation to grow, take action, and become stronger.
Empowering Families with Tax-Free, Risk-Free Wealth Strategies
The financial landscape has evolved rapidly, moving from a commission-driven model to a client-centered approach focused on personalized wealth growth and protection. Advances in technology have made processes faster, more efficient, and more secure. While meetings were traditionally in-person, virtual consultations now allow Mercury Legacy to serve more clients efficiently, and paperwork that once required manual handling is now fully digital.
At Mercury Legacy, we leverage specific tax codes to legally eliminate market risk, management fees, and taxes, enabling clients to retain 30–40% more of their wealth. This tailored approach allows uninterrupted compound growth, tax-free access, and tax-free inheritance, avoiding probate and leaving a lasting legacy.
Central to this strategy is the LIRP (Life Insurance Retirement Plan) a market-linked tool that is never at risk. It combines living and death benefits, offering protection against terminal, chronic, and critical illnesses while growing wealth securely.
Historically, such strategies were accessible primarily to the wealthy. Mercury Legacy’s mission is to make these powerful, tax-free financial solutions available to the middle class, empowering families to protect and grow their wealth with confidence.
Courage, Authenticity, and the Journey to Empower Families
Azzurra made the bold decision to leave her 9–5 job and steady paycheck to pursue the entrepreneurial path with Mercury Legacy. Her vision for the next five years includes growing a skilled team, coaching new agents, and helping thousands of families build secure, tax-free financial futures.
Her guiding principles are simple but powerful: be consistent, believe in yourself, stay authentic, and keep moving forward, even when faced with setbacks. She views challenges not as obstacles but as opportunities to learn, grow, and shine, believing that things don’t happen to you, they happen for you.
Azzurra is known for her transparency and honesty. What you see is what you get. Though naturally introverted, she has honed her ability to connect and communicate confidently, ensuring meaningful relationships with both clients and her team. Her journey is a testament to courage, resilience, and the rare ability to transform expertise and passion into lasting impact.
