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Sara Hamilton

Founder and CEO
Family Office Exchange
Founder and CEO of Family Office Exchange, Sara is a recognized visionary in the private wealth community. While a trust officer at Harris Bank in Chicago in the late 1980s, Sara witnessed the emergence of family wealth management as an industry. Hundreds of U.S. families became centi-millionaires overnight through leveraged buyouts that spawned private financial offices commonly called family offices, to manage family assets and educate wealth owners. Sara was the first professional to recognize family offices as a complex market segment in wealth management.

Sara founded the Family Office Exchange (FOX) in 1989 as a peer network for family office executives. Within 10 years, FOX could see that families needed help with their enterprise vision and managing financial transitions. As a result, FOX evolved into a strategist for family enterprises, a platform for sharing family wealth best practices, and an industry advocate for the importance of private capital in a global economy.

Today, Sara provides strategic direction for FOX and leads the development of new programs and services supporting family enterprises, family office executives and wealth advisory firms in more than 20 countries. She was named one of the Top 50 Women in Wealth Management by Wealth Manager from 2010-2012 and 2019 Outstanding Thought Leader for Wealth Management by Family Wealth Report.

Sara is the co-author of Family Legacy and Leadership: Preserving True Family Wealth in Challenging Times and serves on the executive education faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where she is an adjunct faculty member for their Private Wealth Management course, offered twice per year in Chicago. She is on the founding boards for the Private Directors Association in Chicago and the Foundation for Gender Equality in New York.

SESSIONS

Main Stage: The Board/CEO Relationship Speaker

Leading a company is challenging in any year, but 2020-21 has been more stressful than any year in recent memory. CEOs relied more heavily on their boards, or a “kitchen cabinet” subset of directors. How can a board be the best possible mentors for the CEO? How can directors determine what form of emotional support will be the most helpful?


Please note: You can ask questions anytime during the presentation using the Q&A box. Questions will appear as “waiting for review.” We will get to as many questions as possible. 

If you prefer, you can minimize the Q&A window.

Family Transitions and Complexity Shape the Governance Structure Speaker

This session will take a case study approach to discuss three critical questions:

  1. What’s the family’s vision for the enterprise long-term?
  2. Where does shared ownership create complexity?
  3. How do governance models need to evolve as complexity grows?