The FERC Board of Directors is responsible for the strategic direction of the organization, including selection of the location of the conference and approval of conference hosts, themes, publication partnerships, alliances with other organizations, and other significant decisions. The FERC Board consists of hosts of past and future conferences. The Board is responsible for the strategic direction of the organization, including selection of the location of the conference and approval of conference hosts, themes, publication partnerships, alliances with other organizations, and other significant decisions.
| Frank Hoy (co-President & 2007 Co-host) |
Worcester Polytechnic Institute |
| Allison Pearson (co-President & 2009 Co-Host) |
Mississippi State University |
| Mark Green (Co-Founder, 2005 co-host) |
Family Business Consulting Group |
| Pramodita Sharma (Co-Founder & 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012 co-host) |
JMSB, Concordia University and Babson College
|
| Rich Simmonds (FERC, Sponsor 2006-2009) |
Simmonds Associates LLC |
| Michael Stalker (FERC Sponsor, 2010, 2011) |
MCS Financial Advisors |
| Mauricio E. Alvarez (2007, 2010 Co-host) |
Universidad de Monterrey |
| Alex Stewart (2008 Host) |
Marquette University |
| Reg Litz (2009 Co-host) |
University of Manitoba |
| Alan Carsrud (2010 Co-host) |
Ryerson University, Canada
|
| Antonio Morfin-Maciel (2010 Co-host) |
University of Anahuac, Mexico |
| Jaideep Motwani (2011 Co-host) |
Grand Valley State University |
| Paul Mudde (2011 Co-host) |
Grand Valley State University |
| Tom Schwarz (2011 Co-host) |
California State University, Fullerton
|
| Ritch Sorenson (2011 Co-host) |
University of St. Thomas |
| Michael Carney (2012 Co-host) |
JMSB, Concordia University |
| Luis Cisneros (2012 Co-host) |
HEC Montreal |
Marylène Gagné (2012 Co-host)
|
JMSB, Concordia University |
FRANK HOY (President & 2007
Co-host)
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Frank Hoy is the Paul Beswick Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director
of the Collaborative for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Management from Texas
A&M University. From 1991 to 2001, Dr. Hoy served as dean of the
College of Business Administration at UTEP, where he launched UTEP’s
Centers for Entrepreneurial Development, Advancement, Research and
Support. Prior to that appointment, he was at Georgia State University
as the Carl R. Zwerner Professor of Family-Owned Businesses.
Dr.
Hoy’s research concentrations are family business, franchising and
technology entrepreneurship. He is a past editor of Entrepreneurship
Theory and Practice, and was editor for Latin America for the Journal
of World Business. His most recent book is Entrepreneurial
Family Firms, co-authored by Professor Pramodita Sharma. Hoy is a
Fellow of the Family Firm Institute, the International Council for Small
Business and the International Family Enterprise Research Academy. |
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ALLISON
PEARSON (Vice President & 2009 Co-host)
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Allison Pearson is the W.L. Giles Distinguished Professor and
Professor of Management at Mississippi State University, Starkville,
Mississippi. Allison received her PhD in organizational behavior from
Auburn University in 1993. She utilizes her background in organizational
behavior to research family firms, primarily focusing on the family
firm from a team perspective. Her work on family firms has been
published in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business
Venturing, Journal of Business Research, and Family Business Review.
Allison serves on the editorial board of Entrepreneurship Theory and
Practice, Family Business Review, International Small Business
Management, and Journal of Family Business Strategy. She is a founding
fellow of the Center for Family Enterprise Research at Mississippi State
University.
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MARK GREEN (Co-founder & 2005 co-host)
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Mark Green is a co-founder of the Family Enterprise Research Conference (with Pramodita Sharma). He hosted the inaugural FERC in Portland, Oregon, in 2005.
Mark is an associate of The Family Business Consulting Group, Inc. ® He is the former director of the Austin Family Business Program and the founding director of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program at the College of Business at Oregon State University.
Mark is an active educator, speaker, researcher and advisor on succession, governance, entrepreneurship and professionalization of the family business. He consults and leads academic courses, executive education programs, workshops and seminars for family businesses and professionals who work in family enterprises. He is regularly quoted by the news media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Oregonian, and The Denver Post, regarding issues of relevance to family businesses.
Mark graduated from Cal Poly Pomona (B.S. Business Administration), the Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University (MBA), and the Claremont Graduate School (M.A. Political Economy and Ph.D. Economics and Political Science). He served as chair of the Educator and Research Conference for Family Firm Institute in 2005.
Mark learned first-hand about the challenges of running a family business, including the critical importance of issues such as succession planning, strategic planning and healthy family business relations.
Currently, he sits on the boards of a number of family businesses and non-profit organizations. He lives in Salem, Oregon with his wife Karen and their daughter.
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PRAMODITA SHARMA (Co-founder & 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012 co-host)
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Pramodita Sharma is the co-founder of FERC. She is the CIBC Distinguished Professor of Family Business at the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University. She serves as the editor of Family Business Review – the only SSCI listed journal on family business studies. Pramodita is a visiting scholar at Babson College, where she serves as the Global Director for the Successful Trans-generational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP).
Her research on the succession processes, governance, and dynamics underlying family firms has been honored with several international awards including the NFIB Best Dissertation award from the Entrepreneurship division of the Academy of Management. Supported by various private and government agencies, this research is well received both in academic and practitioner outlets. She is amongst the most frequently cited scholars in family business studies. In addition to two co-authored books and several book chapters, she has published over twenty five scholarly articles on family business studies. Her most recent co-authored (w. Frank Hoy) book on Entrepreneurial Family Firms is currently being used in family business courses around the world and also being translated into Mandarin and Greek.
Sharma is active in leadership and advisory roles in a number of professional associations. She is a Fellow of the Family Firm Institute, and has served in several roles in the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. Sharma maintains close links with the business community. She is a frequent speaker at gatherings of family business leaders around the world. This interaction enables her to share insights from evidence based research with practitioners while ensuring that her research remains focused on issues of significant importance to the family business community. |
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RICH SIMMONDS (FERC, Awards Sponsor 2006-2009)
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Rich Simmonds is managing partner of Simmonds Associates LLC, a Seattle-based family business consulting firm. Mr. Simmonds assists university family business centers with coordinating, strategizing and hosting events for business owners and their families. He also advises families on potential solutions to the inherent challenges they face as a family business. Mr. Simmonds’ years of experience also position him to encourage and promote further research and education involving family businesses.
Simmonds co-founded Tyee Asset Strategies in 1995, serving as the company’s chairman until it merged with Laird Norton Trust Company in 2004. This newly formed company, Laird Norton Tyee, majority owned by the 7th generation Laird, Norton and Clapp families, offers wealth management services to family business owners and their families as well as to individual investors. Before co-founding Tyee, Mr. Simmonds was President of Sheppard, Simmonds and VanHousen, a wealth management company acquired by U.S. Bancorp in 1988.
Mr. Simmonds earned marketing and finance degrees from Central Washington University. He serves on the boards of the University of Washington’s Autism Center and Junior Achievement of Washington. |
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MICHAEL STALKER (FERC, Awards Sponsor 2010, 2011)
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Michael Stalker is the founder of MCS Financial Advisors ([ http://www.mcsfa.com/ ]www.mcsfa.com) and is the firm’s portfolio manager and senior adviser. He offers consulting on wealth management and risk assessment that encompasses investment portfolio assets, family business and human capital. He was ranked among the top “Low Risk” investment managers by Money Manager Verified Ratings. The results were featured in Barron's and Medical Economics magazine. He has earned Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designations as well as certificates in Family Business Advising and Family Wealth Advising from the Family Firm Institute. Michael has testified as a standard of care expert in securities litigation and serves on the board of the Austin Family Business Program at Oregon State University. He has been quoted in such publications as Barron's, the Wall Street Journal, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Investment News and The Oregonian. |
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MAURICIO E. ALVAREZ (2007 and 2010 Co-host)
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Mauricio is the Director of the Family Business Center at the Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico. He has been a featured speaker in Mexico, the United States and South America. He has written and published articles on family business topics and conducted numerous research projects in Mexico.
Mauricio served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Family Firm Institute from 2004 to 2007. Before joining UDEM in 2001, he served as Chief Financial Officer of various family owned businesses in Mexico. |
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Alex Stewart (2008 Host)
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Alex Stewart joined Marquette University in 2000, after ten years as a member of the faculty of Texas Tech University. At Marquette, he serves as the Coleman Foundation Chair and co-director of the Kohler Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Business. He is co-convener of the Organization Science Winter Conference and is a former chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management, the major association of Management scholars. He also serves on the editorial boards of Organization Science and Organizational Research Methods.
Trained in Social Anthropology and Entrepreneurship, he has developed expertise in organizational entrepreneurship (reflected in his book Team Entrepreneurship) and in the use of anthropological methods and theories (reflected in his book The Ethnographer’s Method). Recently, he has worked to bring anthropological expertise to a pioneering group of academics working to develop a scholarly basis for family business studies. |
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REG LITZ (2009 Co-host)
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 Reg Litz is Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the I.H. Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, Canada. His research focuses on entrepreneurship and specifically on new, small and family businesses. He received his Ph.D. in strategic planning and policy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997. His family business research centers on conceptualizing the family business and its stakeholders, intergenerational creativity and the dilemma of inherited un-ethicality.
His work has been published in several leading sources of entrepreneurial and family firm research, including Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Small Business Management, and Family Business Review. He teaches in new, small, and family businesses and has received several awards at both the university and faculty levels.
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ALAN CARSRUD (2010 Co-host)
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Alan L. Carsrud, Ph.D. holds the Loretta Rogers Chair in Entrepreneurship Research and is Professor of Entrepreneurship & Strategy in the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He is also Docent at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. He was formally Professor and founding Executive Director of the Eugenio Pino & Family Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University. Prior to that, he was Senior Lecturer and Academic Coordinator of the Price Center at the Anderson School at UCLA and Senior Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He founded the UCLA Venture Development and Global Access Programs, which help create new, technology-based ventures in Australia, Chile, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico and the United States. In addition, he created the Family and Closely-Held Business Program at UCLA.
He was on the start-up team at People Express Airlines and served as Founding Director of CytoSignal, a biotech firm in Irvine, California. He was on the Board of Stonefield Josephson, Accountants (Santa Monica), HUB Capital Ltd. (Brisbane, QLD), and Andean Mining Technologies (Santiago, Chile). He is currently on the Board of Directors of United Enterprise Fund (UEF) in New York City. Professor Carsrud directed the graduate entrepreneurship programs at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California. He taught at Pepperdine University, Nangang Technological University in Singapore, Anahuac University (Mexico City), and the Australian Graduate School of Management in Sydney. He co-hosted the 2007 annual meeting of the Family Firm Institute. Additionally, Professor Carsrud served as Vice-President for both the International Council for Small Business and the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and was on the Board of Directors of the Family Firm Institute. Dr. Carsrud was Founding Associate Editor of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development and was on the editorial board of Family Business Review, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Small Business Management. |
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PAT COLE (2010 Co-host)
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Patricia M. Cole, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Family Therapy and Family Business and Founding Director of the Institute for Family Business at Nova Southeastern University. She currently heads the Family Business Resource Center at the university. Her work in family business includes teaching, presenting, consulting, writing and research. Her research on women and family relationships in family businesses has been published in family business and family therapy journals. Her current research and writing involves “co-preneurs”, both married and divorced.
In 2001, Dr. Cole was awarded Fellow status in Family Business Advising from the Family Firm Institute and is the Chair of the FFI Academic Awards Committee. She was raised in a family business that was sold in its112th year of operations and is currently involved in a family enterprise with her brother and sister. |
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