Family Business Conference 2018

by Catherine Chew, MBA 2019 

Organizing the 2018 Family Business Conference has been such a rollercoaster ride! Together with Andre (Nogueira) and Daniel (Park), I’ve been busy pulling the final pieces together in time for our April 20th date. We’re super excited about this year’s conference and we think that it won’t disappoint!

From the start, we were really lucky to get helpful advice on how to organise the conference from our Family Business Club Co-Chairs, and also from the CEO of Forbes Asia who organises an annual family business conference as well – but on a much bigger scale! We quickly figured out that we had to double down on the quality of speakers we brought in, and we really hustled on that front.

Currently, we’re so excited to welcome G. Garvin Brown IV, Chairman of the Board of Brown-Forman (which owns Jack Daniels); Allegra Antinori, one of three sisters who has taken over Marchesi Antinori, one of the largest and oldest wineries in Italy; Mads Clausen, board member of the Mads & Bitten Foundation which owns Danfoss Group (12th largest company in Denmark by turnover); Riccardo Preve, COO & CFO of Riso Gallo, the largest rice company in Italy; and other very prominent families in business.

We also thought really hard about what participants would want to get out of the conference. We realised that participants want to learn about real stories from speakers who have similar challenges to themselves. In order to foster an environment where speakers would feel comfortable sharing very personal events, we’ve kept the conference under Chatham House rules. Our first topic, Perpetuating Through a Disruptive Economy, is about the challenge of maintaining a business in a world that is rapidly changing, with new technologies and disrupting inventions. The second part of the conference is about Transitioning into Family Business. Our goal with this topic is to discuss the positive and negative aspects of working in a family business.

Right now, we’re drawing close to the conference date. There’s a lot going on and we’re really busy, but we’re also excited to see everything start to come together!

To find out more about the conference, check out our website.

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