Women in Family Business

What if the most powerful tool for leadership isn’t found in spreadsheets or boardrooms, but in the way we build trust, foster inclusion, and create spaces where everyone can thrive? For Kim Samuel, entrepreneur and Founder and Chief Architect of the Belonging Forum, this question isn’t theoretical; it’s personal. As a fifth-generation member of a historic family enterprise, Kim has spent decades...

For Riham Fathy Ellaw, Executive Board Member and Business Development Director at Egypt’s Nassar Group, the path to modernising a traditional family business was never going to be easy. As the first woman in her family to step into the male-dominated steel industry, she faced scepticism from founders who believed transparency threatened their control, employees who feared change, and even family...

This is a special episode in which we launch our Women in Power report. It is based on a groundbreaking survey of 106 women from family enterprises around the world who shared their lived experiences. Our host, Ramia, is joined in this discussion by her report co-author, Marina Vaughan Spitzy from Tecolote Advisory, to discuss what we've learned about leadership, authority, and the unspoken challe...

Maintaining cohesion and connection in a vast, globally distributed family business while honouring its 170-year-old history is no small feat. Yet for Laura Meyer Ahlström, Family Functions Manager of Finland’s Ahlström Corporation, a multi-generational enterprise with over 420 family members, fostering unity and connection through the art of storytelling is a gratifying challenge. Laura’s connect...

What do a corporate career, working in a family business, and founding a startup have in common? Surprisingly, more than you might think! Nadine Karadag’s journey is a fascinating blend of these diverse environments, and in this episode she reflects on how her approach to leadership and innovation has varied in each setting. Nadine began her career in finance, excelling at Dubai’s NASDAQ and quick...

The art of communication is the glue that holds family businesses together, yet it's often the toughest nut to crack. Why do families in business dance around the conversations that matter most? Conflict, relationships, illness - these topics are the bedrock of our family dynamics but are often shrouded in silence. This silence can ripple through generations, affecting everything from who holds th...

Passion, vision, and leadership play critical roles in determining the success or failure of every family business. However, while passion and vision remain constant sources of inspiration across generations, leadership styles vary and yield diverse results. Often a product of their era, culture, and economic environment, successful business leaders also possess strong strategic compasses that ena...

Interview with Meghan Juday, Chair of Ideal Industries Inc., governance advisor, and founder of The Lodis Forum, and Marina Vaughan Spitzy, founder of legacy planning firm, Tecolote Advisory, and fifth-generation family business stakeholder Whether gender bias exists within the world’s family enterprises has been unequivocally answered.  Yet, despite the gender barriers they face – or possibly bec...

Interview with Eva Fischer Hansen, Family Business Adviser and Founder of Balance2Perform The reasons families choose to sell their businesses vary, but the subsequent, often distressing, process of moving on and navigating the unknown is an experience every former family business owner will inevitability face. For Eva Fischer Hansen, the strain of selling her family’s firm was so great that it le...

In 2007, a phone call changed Haleema Al Owais’ life in an instant. The young mother of a toddler had just started a new position in her burgeoning television management career when she learned her father, Humaid bin Ali Al Owais, had unexpectedly passed away. Pressing through her shock and grief, Haleema resigned from her job and, along with her brother, Ali, took on her father’s role in the fami...

Dr. Yasmina Fechkeur not only ascended through cultural barriers to become a leader in her family’s energy services business, she also fought to bring new perspectives to the sectors she worked in with her family and as an entrepreneur. Working alongside her three brothers, and with the support of her parents, Yasmina played a pivotal role in upgrading her family firm’s infrastructure and communic...

Muna Al Gurg has been instrumental in shaping innovative approaches in her family’s firm. She fondly remembers the stories her father, and company founder, Easa Saleh Al Gurg, told her about navigating the business through Dubai’s early development period in the 70s and 80s. Those experiences helped reinforce Muna’s belief that the ability to adapt in ever-shifting commercial landscapes lies at th...

An increasing number of women are stepping into key leadership roles in their family enterprises. Following in the footsteps of their business-founding mothers, however, remains much less common. This was especially true in the mid-1980s when Nancy Gudekunst answered the call to help her mother, Margaret Custer Ford, with the successful promotional products company she had started in 1959 — a time...

The knowledge that we will inevitably face circumstances beyond our control is part of being a business owner. The steep changes caused by the recent global pandemic showed the capacity of whole industries to pivot at seemingly a moment’s notice. The hospitality sector is particularly sensitive to these global ebbs and flows. Few nations know that better than the UAE, whose hotel industry has been...

Taking over a family business invariably means confronting expectations. Whether it's the legacy of the enterprise’s visionary founder or the agenda of its board members, a family firm’s next-generation leader often contends with pressures that go beyond the already challenging task of charting a successful path for the business. But despite the external noise, the right choices often come by tapp...

After answering her father’s call to help with the family business, Cecily McGuckin saw the need for modernisation and change in the company, ultimately taking on the task while also navigating the operation’s overwhelmingly male culture. While evolving to meet current and future challenges is an important strategy for every business hoping to safeguard their future, Cecily feels that balance and...

Family businesses have experienced significant turbulence and change over the last quarter century, which redefined the fundamentals of social interaction and triggered the restructuring of even some of the most steadfast industries and sectors. Technological advances coupled with societal and environmental forces have upended the status quo of how business is conducted, and catalysed a growing nu...

A recent  report by the International Energy Agency  projects that renewable energy will become the largest global source of electricity by 2025 – that’s enough energy to power all of China in 5 years. Considering this revelation, it’s becoming increasingly hard to imagine a time when investing in renewable energy was a gamble, especially in oil-rich regions like the Middle East. Such investment i...

Many family enterprises are known for their positive impact on their industries and communities. In fact, the most exciting entrepreneurial adventures and the most favourable change often results when a family’s values collide with systemic problems. But doing ‘the right thing’ isn’t always easy, and when ethics and sustainability are top of the agenda, a great deal of innovation and agility is re...

A recent UBS study revealed that 59% of widows and divorcees regret not being involved in long-term financial planning when they were married, and 98% would advise other women to take an active role in finances immediately[1]. With women’s wealth set to outpace global wealth over the next several years[2], it’s never been more important that women are prepared to confront their financial futures....

A family member’s career in the family business often begins with the famous ‘call to action’. But a long and often challenging journey lies between taking that call and building a career that brings fulfilment to oneself and opportunities to the family. Navigating the complex mix of expectations and obligations can bring unforeseen shifts in relationship dynamics and challenge what success means....

Today’s businesses face unprecedented uncertainty. Even before 2020’s pandemic fundamentally upended the status quo, disruption was taking the form of new technology, market globalisation, and ageing demographics. Companies have had to change to meet their goals, but have their boards evolved with them? The board room is coming under increasing pressure to prove its value as the traditional busine...

In its Global Gender Gap Report 2022, the World Economic Forum states that it will take another 132 years before gender pay parity is achieved globally at the current rate of progress. This is the context within which women seek to build their careers and businesses, and for many these challenging professional demands are compounded by expectations at home. In this episode of WiFB, Naomi George, f...

KPMG Private Enterprise has famously published numerous studies and thought leadership articles on women in family businesses from across the globe, but none of these publications has looked exclusively at the role of women in Saudi Arabia. Until now! With the number of women in the Kingdom’s workforce increasing over the last decade, and women assuming leadership roles in Saudi companies, many of...

In this episode of Women in Family Business, Sophia Rascoff, co-founder and CEO of Recon Food, talks about starting a brand-new social media platform with her father, being an entrepreneur in her teens and establishing a healthy work/life balance. She also addresses some of the issues surrounding other social media platforms and how these can be managed by creating a stronger sense of community.