The UofL Family Business Center Sustains Kentuckiana Family Businesses

For more than 30 years, the Family Business Center at the University of Louisville has been bringing individuals together to create a learning community where families and their businesses gain the knowledge and connections they need to grow, succeed, and thrive from generation to generation. Members gather for round table discussions in peer groups including CEO’s, Next Generation Leaders, and Non-Family Executives working in the family business, among others, to share best practices and to work through challenges they are experiencing. Multigenerational family business leaders often share stories about how they have navigated, preserved, and honored rich family legacies. Members also have frank discussions about how they handle challenges working with family and missteps they have taken that nearly shuttered their business. Peer group discussions and monthly educational offerings encourage family business leaders to plan for the future, prepare for the unexpected and provide tools to help maintain family harmony.

Membership in the Family Business Center maintains a 70/30 split of family businesses to professional advisors. In addition to the peer learning happening in groups, advisors add meaningful content through monthly workshops on topics such as succession and exit planning, building governance, family harmony, legislative issues impacting family business, and more.

The mission of the organization is to sustain Kentuckiana family businesses through support, education, and advocacy, to create a community of business owners that helps strengthen the family and the business, to provide educational resources to help business-owning families, family enterprises, and family business partners achieve multigenerational success, to generate, translate and disseminate research, and to advocate for the entrepreneurial and economic role of business-owning families and family enterprises in our region.

Housed in the College of Business, the Center connects business leaders with various resources across the University of Louisville and has access to best-in-class content and educators. The University of Louisville recently ranked 38^th in the world among top education institutions for Family Business research. One of our faculty members, Dr. Isabel Botero, who is actively engaged in the Center as a facilitator and presenter, was named 8^th among top researchers in this space (University Ranking : McCoy College of Business : Texas State University (txst.edu)). The Family Business Management and Advising Certificate is a standalone option for family business leaders or for students pursing their MBA to focus their elective coursework in this space.  

Are you interested in learning more or getting plugged into this great community of family businesses? Contact us for additional information at FBC@Louisville.edu.