8 Steps for a Smooth Leadership Succession Process

Sara Hamilton

Founder & Board Chair, Family Office Exchange (FOX)

Sara is one of the first professionals to recognize family offices as the most sophisticated segment of wealth management, and she has been described as “the Warren Buffet of the family office industry”. When hundreds of U.S. families became centi-millionaires through leveraged buyouts in the 1980s and 1990s, private family offices were created to manage family capital and to educate wealth owners.

Sara founded the Family Office Exchange (FOX) as a peer network for family office executives in 1989. Within 10 years, she could see that families needed help with family governance and managing financial transitions, in addition to their family offices. As a result, FOX evolved into an advisor to family enterprises, a platform for sharing family wealth best practices, and an industry advocate for the importance of private enterprise in a global economy.

Today, Sara provides input to the strategic direction for FOX and supports the development of new programs and services for family enterprises and wealth advisory firms in 25 countries. Sara is the co-author of Family Legacy and Leadership: Preserving True Family Wealth in Challenging Times.

She serves on the executive education faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where she is an adjunct faculty member for their Private Wealth Management and Essentials of Wealth courses in the Executive Education program. She is on the founding board for the Foundation Advancing Impact and Sustainability in Bologna and the founding board for the Private Directors Association in Chicago.

Carl Robinson, Ph.D.

Founding Partner, Vantage Leadership

Dr. Robinson heads Vantage's Family Business Practice and has focused much of his career on senior-level succession planning and coaching. Consulting at this level requires a deep appreciation for organizational, political, and family dynamics, and Dr. Robinson matches his considerable perspective in this regard with well-grounded insights into individual change and development.

Licensed as a clinical psychologist in 1988, Dr. Robinson's years of training and counseling shape his approach when consulting for and working with family held enterprises. He has consulted extensively for numerous families as they managed significant transitions across generations. Dr. Robinson also advises organizations currently led by family members–helping them identify and align leadership direction and strategy. His clientele is broad and far-reaching.

Dr. Robinson has authored a number of articles and has frequently been interviewed by various business publications, including the Wall Street Journal. In addition, he is a highly regarded public speaker with an engaging and energetic style. He and his wife Karen reside in Chicago, Illinois. They have two grown children who live on opposite coasts, which gives them plenty of reasons to indulge their passion for travel.

David Shaw

Publishing Director, Family Business Magazine

David Shaw is the publishing director for MLR Media. He also co-founded and serves as conference director of the Transitions conferences, the Private Company Governance Summit and Family Business Legacy. David writes frequently on governance issues for public and private companies, and develops and maintains close relationships with multi-generational family-owned businesses. He is married, with two grown children.