Courtney Collette
Partner and Head of Education & Research
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group
Courtney Collette is a partner at CFEG and 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. CFEG is devoted to helping families and ownership groups navigate the new economy and achieve multigenerational success for their families, enterprises, and financial wealth.
Ms. Collette is a family enterprise professor, researcher, and advisor. Her work focuses on the key pillars of multigenerational strategy and longevity. Since 2004, she has been in the family enterprise field researching, educating, and advising family enterprises (including family businesses and family offices) of different generations, ownership stages, and industries around the world. She helps family owners develop multigenerational strategies and navigate generational transitions through the lenses of long-term success, family success, family and owner unity, governance, owners value creation, succession, next generation, owner development, and family education, among others.
At the MIT Sloan School of Management, Ms. Collette is a lecturer on family enterprise. She co-leads the flagship program, Future Family Enterprise, with Professor John Davis, and teaches and designs family enterprise courses on a range of topics related to multigenerational success.
An area of specialty for Ms. Collette is her work as an education strategist. She designs innovative learning plans and experiences for families to build skills, teamwork, and readiness for the enterprise’s next growth phase. Since 2011, she has led the Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise, the education and research arm of CFEG, where she is chief designer of education programming, research, and publications. She oversees the portfolio of open enrollment programs and private custom workshops. These programs span a range of topics, for example: Making Family Councils More Effective, Compounding Your Family’s Wealth, Preparing Owners of a Family Business, Building a Worldclass Board for the Family Enterprise, and Should I Join the Family Business. Ms. Collette designs and leads, with faculty teams, an array of custom workshops for individual families, next generation groups, and owner teams on relevant topics tailored to each family enterprise.
Ms. Collette speaks and publishes on topics pertaining to family enterprise success. She has conducted research and co-authored white papers on topics such as “The Future of Family Enterprise” and “The Millennial Generation in Enterprising Families,” among others. Her latest articles include: “How to Raise the Capability Level of Owners of a Family Enterprise,” “Where to Invest Next as a Business Family,” “Understanding Conflict in the Family Business,” “Family Business Board Composition,” “CEO Succession in the Family Business,” “Top Leadership: Who is Architecting Your Family Enterprise?” “Don’t Overlook Ownership Succession,” and “The Value of a Family Office,” among others. She is co-author of the book, Next Generation Success (CFEG, 2014) and a contributor to the books, Family Office Navigator (IMD and CFEG) and Looking into the Future of Family Business (FBN and CFEG).
Earlier in her career, Ms. Collette spent 13 years at Harvard Business School in family enterprise. As a research associate and teaching assistant, she studied family companies globally, wrote case studies and articles, produced video cases and educational materials, and supported the MBA course, Management of the Family Business (led by Professor John Davis). She was also a curriculum designer and coach in family business executive programs, for which she led coaching teams.
Ms. Collette earned her MBA from Babson College and her BA in Sociology from the University of California. She completed coursework at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
