Courtney Collette
Partner and Head of Education & Research
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. 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 an educator, researcher, and advisor to family enterprises. Since 2004, she has been in the family enterprise field researching and writing, and advising and educating multigenerational family enterprises of diverse sizes, generations and industries around the world. She assists families with their long-term family enterprise strategies, education strategies, engagement and preparation of the next generation, succession transitions, family and owner governance, family unity, and crucial conversations.
Since 2011, Ms. Collette has led the Cambridge Institute. She is the chief designer of education programs, curricula, research studies, and publications for family enterprise audiences worldwide. She oversees education programming, including the portfolio of open enrollment programs and private custom workshops. These programs span a wide range of topics, for example: Making Family Councils More Effective, Compounding Your Family’s Wealth, Preparing Owners of a Family Business, and Building a Worldclass Board for the Family Enterprise, In addition, private custom workshops for individual families and organizations are designed and led by Ms. Collette with a team of faculty around the world, covering relevant topics and action planning tailored to each family enterprise’s goals.
At the MIT Sloan School of Management, Ms. Collette is a lecturer on family enterprise. She teaches in the flagship executive education program, Future Family Enterprise, as well as in custom programs on a range of family enterprise topics. She co-designs, with Professor John Davis, the curriculum of the Future Family Enterprise program, and leads the program’s coaching team. For MIT’s suite of family enterprise executive programs, she advises on program design and curricula.
Ms. Collette has authored important publications pertaining to family enterprise success. Her latest articles include: “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). She has authored several CFEG and Harvard Business School case studies and multimedia courseware on family-owned businesses.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Collette spent 13 years at Harvard Business School in the family enterprise area. In the Families in Business executive program, she was chief curriculum designer (with program chair, Prof. John Davis) and led the facilitator team. As a research associate and teaching assistant, she studied family companies, wrote several case studies, produced video cases, developed educational materials and supported the design and operations of Prof. Davis’ MBA course, Management of the Family Business.
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.
