Anita Haensler
Senior Advisor
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group
Anita Haensler is senior advisor at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise (CFEG), a highly specialized global advisory firm serving family enterprises. Cambridge Advisors and Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise, an education and research institute, are divisions of Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, a global organization founded in 1989. It is devoted to helping families and ownership groups navigate the new economy and achieve multigenerational success for their families, enterprises, and financial wealth.
Ms. Haensler focuses on professional and personal development of leaders, teams and individuals, as well as advising businesses on talent management, succession planning, organizational culture, and governance. She is a passionate coach and mentor, and values the unique diversity implicit in working with family-owned businesses and next generation family members. Ms. Haensler is known for designing innovative developmental experiences that promote individual and collective awareness and learning.
Her current voluntary contribution focuses on promoting women’s professional growth and career planning by coordinating, on a technical level, the mentoring initiative of the Professional Women Network in Portugal (PWN Lisbon). Prior voluntary engagements include board membership and acting as board president of the German School in Lisbon.
Ms. Haensler started out her career as an expert in Corporate Finance at Coopers & Lybrand before she joined McKinsey & Company in 1998. There she served a wide range of clients and led client engagement in Portugal and abroad, integrating the Corporate Finance and Energy Professional Practices. In the second half of her 12 years at McKinsey & Company’s Lisbon office, she assumed the role of Director of Recruiting & Professional Development. Since 2010 her focus has been on coaching, training, leadership development, and assessments while simultaneously advising on HR best practices – first at a small boutique HR firm, then at Sofia Calheiros & Associates, a company she cofounded.
Ms. Haensler completed a graduate course in Auditing and Consulting at CEMAF/ISCTE (Lisbon/Portugal) and holds a BA in Business Administration from Universität Innsbruck (Austria) with specialization in Marketing and International Economics through a one-year ECTS program at Lancaster University (UK). She concluded her professional training as a corporate coach and obtained various certifications, including MBTI (Step I & Step II), Level 2 Cultural Intelligence facilitator, Unconscious Bias facilitator, and Saville Assessment instruments among others. She is fluent in German, English and Portuguese.
