Upcoming Events
Allen Weiss & Debbie MacInnis – The Brand Benefits Playbook: Why Customers Aren’t Buying What You’re Selling – And What to Do About It
may 16, 2024
Click here to register for this event.
Allen Weiss is an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California. His academic research focuses on decision-making in B2B companies, especially in high-tech markets. For over 30 years, Weiss has helped a variety of organizations (e.g., Texas Instruments, Intel, Hughes Space and Communications, Northrop Grumman) on market segmentation and positioning based on brand benefits. He is also the Founder and CEO of MarketingProfs, LLC, a B2B training and events company with over 600,000 subscribers, 457,000 Twitter followers and 55,000 LinkedIn followers.
Debbie MacInnis is the Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Professor of Business Administration and Emerita Professor of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and the Doris Drucker Chair and Full Research Professor at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. An expert on consumer behavior and branding, she is a Fellow of the American Marketing Association, the Association for Consumer Research, and the Society for Consumer Psychology. In addition to being a prolific author, MacInnis consults with major consumer goods companies, branding agencies, and advertising agencies.
Past Events
Authors @ Drucker is an interview series sponsored by The James E. Hughes, Jr. Foundation. Each session features topics relevant to students, alumni, and friends of the Drucker School that are curious about issues surrounding multi-generational family businesses and family wealth. View all sessions of Authors @ Drucker here.
Richie Norton is an award-winning author, serial entrepreneur, and international speaker who is recognized as one of the world’s top 100 business coaches. Anti-Time Management delivers an innovative framework for discovering your motivation, concentrating on your priorities, and finding a work-life balance. Click here to watch the recording.
Bridget Hilton and Joe Huff are business partners, co-authors, and keynote speakers who help individuals enrich their lives and careers with fulfilling experiences. Experiential Billionaire is a guidebook to living a fulfilling and regret-free life, as told through research, real stories, and actionable takeaways. Click here to watch the recording.
David York is an estate planning attorney and CPA with over two decades of experience working with a diverse clientele across the wealth spectrum. In his recent book The Gift of Lift, York delves into the notion of stewardship and how we can be a part of something greater than ourselves. Click here to watch the recording.
Katherine Howe is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian and novelist. She is the author of several novels for adult and young adult audiences, has edited two volumes of primary sources for Penguin Classics, and is the co-author (with Anderson Cooper) of #1 New York Times bestselling books Vanderbilt and Astor. Click here to watch the recording.
Rob Lachenauer is a seasoned advisor, business leader, and writer specializing in family business leadership and governance. He works with families worldwide, guiding them to realize their full potential and enhance their ownership effectiveness. Click here to watch the recording.
Peter Vogel is a Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship at IMD Business School. An expert on family enterprises, he leads IMD’s work in this field as Director of the IMD Global Family Business Center and Debiopharm Chair of Family Philanthropy. Click here to watch the recording.
Bernie Jaworski is the Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts, as well as an ISBM and AMA Marketing Fellow. Jaworski comes to the Drucker School from IMD, a highly regarded business school based in Switzerland. Prior to IMB, he was a senior partner of the Monitor Group, a global management consulting firm. Jaworski is also the co-author of four textbooks on e-commerce and teaches about topics that include leadership, corporate strategy, and service management. Click here to watch the recording.
James (Jay) E. Hughes, Jr., Esq., is the author and co-author of numerous books like Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family, Family – The Compact Among Generations, and The Voice of the Rising Generation. He maintains a variety of roles, such as being a member of the Advisory Board of Arlington Partners, the Chair Emeritus and Chair of the Distribution and Beneficiary Life Enhancement Committee of Lineage Trust Company, and a Fellow of the Family Firm Institute. Click here to watch the recording.
Karen Dillon is the former editor of Harvard Business Review and a prolific writer whose works include The New York Times bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life? (co-authored with Clayton Christensen) and The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems – and What to Do about It (co-authored with Rob Cross). She is also the Editorial Director of Banyan Global, a group of Family Business Advisors that brings together deeply integrated and multidisciplinary expertise in family, business, finance, ownership, and philanthropy. Click here to watch the recording.
Seth Godin describes himself as a teacher that does projects. He is a versatile individual who wears many hats – a prolific writer with 20 bestselling books translated into almost 40 languages, an influential online educator and five-time TED Talk speaker, and a distinguished marketing expert recognized in the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame, the Direct Marketer Hall of Fame, and the Marketing Hall of Fame. Listen to Godin talk about his latest book, The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams. Click here to watch the recording.
Whitney Johnson is the CEO of Disruption Advisors, a leadership development company. She was named a 2021 Top #10 Business Thinker by Thinkers50, and is a globally recognized thought-leader, keynote speaker, executive coach, and consultant. A former award-winning Wall Street equity analyst, she understands how companies work, how investors think, and how the best coaches coach. In this session, Johnson helps attendees understand how disruptive innovation can be applied to their unique paths. Click here to watch the recording.
Russ Alan Prince is one of the most published authors on the topic of private wealth. He has completed work on 40 books covering a range of subjects from investor psychology to luxury spending, from understanding the middle-class millionaire to the political philosophies of the super-rich. Robert C. Daugherty served as the Dean of the Forbes School of Business and Technology and is a Professor of Strategy and Finance. Having served on over two dozen corporate boards, he regularly advises private equity firms, institutional investors, and family offices on mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. They provided guidelines for family members and senior executives, as outlined in their book How to Build a High-Performing Single-Family Office. Click here to watch the recording.
Jamie Weiner, Psy.D is the co-founder of Quest for Legitimacy, a series of intimate conversations with the rising generation of prominent families from around the world. The mission is to support those raised in prominent families to successfully break through their felt isolation and navigate their quest for legitimacy. Weiner shared his findings from his book The Quest for Legitimacy: How Children of Prominent Families Discover Their Unique Place in the World. Click here to watch the recording.
Trudy Cathy White is a native Georgian and the only daughter of Jeannette M. and S. Truett Cathy, the founders of Chick-fil-A, Inc. She began working for the family business when she was 19 years old, becoming the youngest restaurant operator at that time. She currently serves as an ambassador for the family business. In her book A Quiet Strength: The Life and Legacy of Jeannette M. Cathy, White delved into her mother’s untold story. Click here to watch the recording.
Kristin Keffeler, MSM, MAPP is a thought leader, writer, and speaker at the forefront of a global shift in family wealth advising, known as Wealth 3.0. She is the founder and principal for Illumination360 and the Chief Learning Officer for the Johnson Financial Group, a multi-family office and wealth management firm based in Denver. As a consultant, she guides affluent and enterprising families, rising gen, and the professionals who support them in embracing the positive power of wealth and doing the “inner work” of money. Keffeler discussed her most recent book, The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth and Creating an Impactful Life. Click here to watch the recording.
Tom McCullough is the Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Northwood Family Office, an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Western University’s Ivey School of Business. He has spent over 35 years in the wealth management family office field and was awarded Best Individual Contribution to Thought Leadership in the Wealth Management Industry (North America) by the 2020 Family Wealth Report Awards. In this session, he reviewed lessons from his book Wealth of Wisdom: Top Practices for Wealthy Families and their Advisors. Click here to watch the recording.
Chad Ford is an associate professor of International Cultural Studies and Director of the McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at BYU-Hawaii. His emphasis is on intercultural peacebuilding and mediation. He has led peacebuilding workshops and mediations around the world, including in the Middle East, Africa, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In this session, Ford went through lessons from his book Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work, and in the World. Click here to watch the recording.
Amy Hart Clyne has dedicated her career to helping prosperous families fulfill the promise and potential of their legacies. As Chief Knowledge and Learning Officer at Pitcairn, she empowers wealthy families through education while pioneering research and best practices that elevate the role of advisors to one of true partnership. She shared insights from her book Finding her Voice and Creating a Legacy during this session of the Authors @ Drucker interview series. Click here to watch the recording.
Jim Grubman is a Boston-based family advisor who has worked with individuals, couples, and families of wealth for over 30 years. His work has been featured in print, online, and television media, and speaking engagements in wealth management and family dynamics. In this session, Jim discussed his book Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth across Generations. Click here to watch the recording.
Mircea Raianu is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland and teaches courses on South Asia, the Indian Ocean world, and global capitalism. He delved into the history of the Tata Group – one of the largest family businesses in the world – and shared lessons from his book Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism. Click here to watch the recording.
Dennis Jaffe, a member of Wise Counsel Research, is a San Francisco-based advisor to families about family business, governance, wealth and philanthropy. During this session, he discussed his book Borrowed From Your Grandchildren: The Evolution of 100-Year Family Enterprises. Click here to watch the recording.
Sponsored by the Woody and Gayle Hunt Family Foundation, this seminar series featured six interactive education sessions aimed at teaching business-owning families how to leverage Peter Drucker’s key management principles. The sessions focused on unique challenges in family business such as managing generational transitions, balancing tradition with innovation, and ensuring sustainability.
The inaugural session featured an in-depth presentation of Drucker Principles by Drucker School of Management Professors Vijay Sathe and Bernie Jaworski and an insightful conversation with Bill Betts, the 6th-generation President and COO of Betts Company. Watch the recording here.
The second session featured keynote speakers Cindi Bigelow, CEO of Bigelow Tea Company, and Professor Pramodita (Dita) Sharma, the Schlesinger-Grossman Chair of Family Business at the Grossman School of Business at the University of Vermont, who shared insights on family business continuity as a force for good. Watch the recording here.
Peter Drucker advised future leaders to prepare for entrepreneurship and innovation. What does this look like for family businesses? INSEAD’s Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Leadership Randel Carlock was the featured speaker for the third session on family entrepreneurship. Carlock led attendees through a hands-on approach to understanding family entrepreneurial behavior and leadership across the founding, professionalizing, and sustaining stages of the family business life cycle. Watch the recording here.
The fourth session focused on a key challenge in family business: managing continuity and change––specifically the process of succession. Simon Cordes (MBA, ’12), fourth generation in a family-owned, mid-size glass manufacturing business in Germany, shared his personal experience of succession within a family business. He was joined by Dennis Jaffe, a leader in family enterprise consulting and clinical psychologist who discuessed the lessons he learned from working with 100-year family enterprises. Watch the recording here.
The fifth session focused on key factors that lead to a prepared and educated rising generation. Peter F. Drucker Chair and Professor of Management Bernard Jaworski set the stage with a presentation on the Drucker principle of managing across multiple time periods. Representatives from Drucker School Global Family Business Institute partners BNY Mellon and Whittier Trust facilitated conversations with family business leaders about their experiences in leading change and passing values down to the next generation. Watch the recording here.
The sixth and final session focused on governance, shared ownership and shared decisions. Professor Katharina Pick, Clinical Associate Professor at the Drucker School, presented on the Drucker principle of managing people. Dave Specht, Director of the Global Family Business Institute, facilitated a conversation with Ben Casper and Teresa Gledhill, siblings from a second generation agriculture operation who shared their experience with navigating the complexities of shared ownership with a family property. We also heard from Robert Duncan, Chairman Emeritus of Duncan Aviation, the largest aviation maintenance company in the world. Robert was an early adopter and implementer of the non-fiduciary advisory board for his family business. Watch the recording here.
Music, Entertainment, and the Family Business
Delve into an insightful conversation about the music industry and family with special guests Jeffery David (Producer/Songwriter for Seal, Echosmith, Zedd, For King and Country, and Mat Kearney) and Linda Sierota (Creative Director and Tour Manager for Echosmith, Vans Warped Tour, Warner Music, and Sony). Jeffery and Linda are also parents of Warner artist Echosmith – creators of chart-topping hits like “Cool Kids,” “Bright,” “Over my Head,” and more. Listen here.
Life Cycle of the Family Office
Family office experts Timothy Lappen, Efi Avigdor, and Ken Kilroy used a life cycle approach to examine the form and function of some of the world’s largest family offices. They discussed the structures that family offices use, concentrating on how family offices can be built, modified, and reinvented to focus on the family’s most precious asset: the family. Review the recording here.
Attracting & Retaining Non-Family Executives to a Family Business
As family businesses grow, they develop a need for non-family talent and leadership. Andreas von Specht explained some of the unique complexities non-family executives face in leading family-owned businesses. He also offered some strategies to attract and retain the best non-family talent to a family business. Click here to listen to the recording.
Managing the Family Business Course Information Session
Do you come from a family business? Do you consult with family businesses? Do you want to work for a family business? Do you want to understand how family businesses are different from the rest? If so, then consider enrolling in the Managing the Family Business course taught by Professor Vijay Sathe in the spring. In this information session, Professor Sathe highlighted some of the exciting elements of this course. Get a sneak peek at what you will learn and experience here.
Why Studying Family Business is Important for Management Scholars: The Family Capital Approach
Dr. Gibb Dyer explained the importance of family business in the world’s economy and how strengthening an owning-family’s “family capital” can lead to positive outcomes for both the family and the business. He also discussed how various disciplines in academia (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics) can be used in the study of family businesses. Implications for both family business theory and practice were discussed, along with a brief history of the field of family business and the key issues in the field that have caught the attention of both academics and practitioners.
Legislative Updates & Tips for Year-End Planning
This talk discussed legislative updates and pending issues that will affect family businesses. Pat Soldano, President and Chairman of Family Enterprise USA and Senior Fellow and founding member of the Global Family Business Institute, discussed national education and advocacy in Washington D.C. aimed at promoting family businesses and their economic growth in the U.S. Bob Renken, Executive Vice President of Whittier Trust, discussed end-of-year tax and estate planning tips that business-owning families should be aware of. View the presentation slides here.