Dear Colleagues,

After more than two years of meeting virtually, the FFI Board of Directors was able to hold its annual retreat in-person in Cambridge, MA, the first weekend in March. It was such a pleasure see the board members in person, some of whom I had not seen for more than two years. In attendance were the following members:

Carlo Salvato, vice-chair, Sandra McNeely, treasurer, Mike Connolly, legal counsel; and board members Richa Arora, Mary Duke, Heinz-Peter Elstrodt, Dan Frosh, Lisa Morel, Maya Prabhu, Jon Ramos and Sanjay Sharma.

We kicked off the retreat with a regional reception on Thursday evening, where nearly 40 FFI members and friends braved the cold to see each other and to hear a bit more about FFI’s plans for 2022.

The retreat began officially on Friday afternoon, during which the board discussed the networking and event aspects of the upcoming global conference in Cambridge. The board met with Caleb White, chair of the Boston-Cambridge Conference Committee, which is organizing activities. Go here to see the upper tier of sponsorship opportunities and go here to consider the lower tier of sponsorships. Please email Judy Green if you are interested in pursuing these opportunities.

A discussion was held addressing the 2086 Society, FFI’s most recent applied-research initiative, with founding member Patricia Annino. She outlined the activities of this three-year pilot project, and the board discussed the importance of advancing opportunities for applied research. Two commissioned reports have been completed: Professionalizing the Business Family (2020) and The Governance Marathon (2021). Seven FFI Practitioner articles have featured these two reports. If you missed any, please go to ffipractitioner.org to read them.

This year, the 2086 Society is sponsoring Mark Stevenson as Futurenaut-in-Residence at FFI. Mark gave the closing keynote at the London conference last year, and in January of this year I was pleased to join him in a podcast entitled “Falling in Love with the Future.” Mark will facilitate a meeting in London in May about the future of family enterprise with a “futurenaut” lens. He will host a webinar in July and will join us in October for the 2022 conference produced in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management, this year’s academic host.

The board extended its appreciation to the founding and current members of the 2086 Society: Patricia Annino, Fredda Herz Brown, John Davis, Nancy Drozdow, Judy Green, and Paul Karofsky. Since its founding, the 2086 Society has welcomed Maya Prabhu and Patricia Frishkoff. Go here for more details. Future plans for this board initiative will be discussed in June.

We also discussed the conference rotation for the coming years. Currently planned are meetings in 2022 in Boston, 2023 in NYC at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, and 2024 in London. More to follow on these events and academic hosts.

On Saturday the board spent the morning with John Davis, discussing some of upcoming conference themes and their implications for the field. John is the chair of the 2022 Conference Program Committee, which will announce the final program shortly. In the meantime, please go here for the Winter Special registration rate. Special rates for reservation at the Boston Marriott Cambridge are currently available and rooms can be booked here.

The rest of Saturday was spent reviewing various academic models and initiatives focused on family enterprise research, including a discussion of the difficulties related to securing reliable data sets for family enterprise research. Board members Patricia Angus, Carlo Salvato, and Sanjay Sharma presented a panel which stimulated a rich discussion. Included in the afternoon was a feedback session on a model Heinz-Peter Elstrodt is working on, as well as a conversation with the Nominating Committee co-chairs Dan Frosh and Richa Arora.

The board went into a formal session at the end the day and approved the renewal of the SAGE contract for Family Business Review, as well as agreeing to hold the 2022 annual meeting virtually in November.

The meeting adjourned late Saturday afternoon, and I think we all agreed that it is a pleasure and honor to be in leadership roles of this extraordinary organization amid a time of such challenge and opportunities.