Dear Colleagues,

It was a pleasure to chair this year’s FFI board retreat which included Carlo Salvato, vice-chair; Ken McCracken, secretary; Sandra McNeely, treasurer; board members Patricia Angus, Richa Arora, Jeff Cobb, Mary Duke, Heinz-Peter Elstrodt, Dan Frosh, Panikkos Poutziouris, Jon Ramos, Sanjay Sharma, and legal counsel Michael Connelly; Judy Green, FFI president; and Brigett Owens, GEN and conference coordinator.

The retreat was preceded on Thursday by a meeting of the 2023 conference program committee and a regional reception for FFI members and friends in NYC, including members of the Bocconi Alumni Association.

The board retreat began officially on Friday afternoon and was organized around FFI’s three strategic pillars: Research, Public Awareness, and Education.

First on the agenda was Pillar I: Research, which included reports on Family Business Review (presented by Carlo Salvato) and the 2086 Society. The Board had the opportunity to kick off the work of 2086 Society Scholar-in-Residence Jason Jay with a Zoom presentation on his research project this year, Systemic Family Investing.

Jason is lined up for an exciting series of events with FFI over 2023. You can read more about Jason’s work in the March 3 issue of FFI on Friday. Up next on May 3 is a virtual session with Jason and the GEN alumni and current enrollees.

On Saturday, the Board considered Pillar II: Public Awareness from two angles. The first segment explored opportunities that might exist in the near and long-term future with our active organizational members and Asian Circle participants. This discussion was led by Heinz-Peter Elstrodt, who had conducted a series of interviews with members in the area prior to the board retreat.

Second, Dan Frosh, board member and managing editor of FFI Practitioner, presented some amazing data on our weekly digital publication. Included was that the open rate had risen from 29% in 2021 to 41% in 2022, benchmarked against an industry standard of 18%. Also noteworthy was the statistic that in 2022, more the 4000 people around the world listened to the FFI Practitioner podcasts. Many opportunities lie ahead for this publication. Thanks to the authors, the podcast presenters, and, of course, all the readers and listeners. Please consider writing for FFI Practitioner in 2023! FYI: all back issues are available on www.ffipractitioner.org.

We then turned to Pillar III: Education, which includes the GEN program and the annual conference. The GEN program continues to thrive, and we were pleased to have new board member Jeff Cobb, whose expertise is in online professional education, provide insights on where virtual education is going and suggest additions and improvements that can be made to the GEN program. Jeff will lead a task force, convening in the next few weeks and reporting back to the board in a few months, on next steps for the program.

The board then broke into small groups to discuss the upcoming conferences, including formats and locations. The 2023 conference will be in NYC and the 2024 conference will be in London.

The rest of Saturday was spent in discussion with the 2023 Nominating Committee, reviewing expectations for current and future board members as well as how the board composition reflects the strategic initiatives. An invitation will go out in the March 24 issue of FFI on Friday with more details from the Nominating Committee and the possibility of submitting names for consideration as future board members.