Courtney Collette
Head of Education & Research, CIFE; Senior Advisor and Partner, CFEG
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group
Courtney Collette is the head of education and research for the Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise, a leading education and research institute dedicated to the significant issues family enterprises face. She is also a senior advisor at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise, a highly specialized international advisory firm serving family enterprises. Both organizations are divisions of Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, a global organization founded in 1989, where Ms. Collette is a partner and serves on the board. It is devoted to helping families and ownership groups navigate the new economy and achieve multigenerational success for their families, enterprises, and financial wealth.
Since 2004, Ms. Collette has advised multigenerational family enterprises of diverse sizes, generations and industries in North America, Latin America and Europe. She assists families with multigenerational family enterprise strategies, design and implementation of family and owner governance, strengthening family unity, education and training of family members for future roles, preparation of the next generation, succession transitions, and facilitating difficult conversations.
Since 2011, Ms. Collette has led the Cambridge Institute’s strategy and growth. She is the chief designer of education programs, curricula, and publications for family enterprise audiences worldwide. She oversees the education programming, research studies and publications of the Cambridge Institute, including its portfolio of open enrollment programs: Preparing Owners of a Family Business, Building a Worldclass Board for the Family Enterprise, Making Family Councils More Effective, and Compounding Your Family’s Wealth. In addition, the private custom workshops for individual families and organizations are designed and led by Ms. Collette with a team of faculty around the world.
At the MIT Sloan School of Management, Ms. Collette is a lecturer on family enterprise in the Future Family Enterprise executive program. She co-designs, with Professor John Davis, the curriculum of the Future Family Enterprise program, and leads the coaching team for the program. She advises on the design and curricula for MIT’s suite of family enterprise executive programs.
Ms. Collette has authored important publications pertaining to the success of family enterprises. Her latest articles include: “Where to Invest Next as a Business Family,” “Understanding Conflict in the Family Business,” “CEO Succession in the Family Business,” and “Top Leadership: Who is Architecting Your Family Enterprise?” among others. She is co-author of the book, Next Generation Success (Cambridge Family Enterprise Press, 2014) and several CFEG and Harvard Business School case studies and multimedia courseware on family-owned businesses worldwide.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Collette spent 13 years at Harvard Business School in the family enterprise studies area. She served as facilitator in the Families in Business executive program, led its facilitator team, and contributed to the curriculum design. As a research associate, she studied family companies, wrote case studies, produced video cases, and developed educational materials on family enterprises. As a teaching assistant, she supported the curriculum design and operations of the MBA course, Management of the Family Business, led by Professor John Davis.
Ms. Collette earned her MBA from Babson College and her BA in Sociology from the University of California. She completed undergraduate coursework at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
