Wealthy families quietly attend new courses at Canadian universities

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Sooner or later, successful family enterprises face the same critical questions: Who will carry the family’s interests into the future, and how can they best be set up for success?

Educational institutions in the United States, such as Columbia, Harvard and the University of Vermont, offer programs to respond to this need. Canada’s post-secondary institutions are expanding their offerings as well.

The Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI) at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management is a notable example. Others include Rotman’s Family Wealth Management Program at the University of Toronto; HEC Montreal at the University of Montreal; the Centre for Family Business and Regional Prosperity at Dalhousie; the Smith School of Business at Queens and the FamilyShift program developed by KPMG and the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey Business School.

Here’s what’s going on at three universities in particular.

Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University

A recent addition is the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University, which has just created a Family Business Institute focusing on research, engagement and education. It ties together research with undergraduate course offerings focused on family business and related entrepreneurship courses.

“The holy grail of any family-business program is to understand how we can engage the next generation,” says Francesco Barbera, who was invited in 2021 to become the institute’s academic director and to serve as an associate professor of entrepreneurship and innovation. He says about 40 per cent of his students are part of a family business, and another 20 per cent work for a family business.

“We really want to zero in on the family side – business family rather than family business,” he says.

In one course, Barbera’s students study theories of family business and then apply them to famous case studies as if they were consultants. One team is chosen to compete in the annual Schlesinger Global Family Enterprise Case Competition at the University of Vermont. Barbera’s 2023 inaugural team came in second in the world.

In October 2023, the institute held its first event on campus with Toronto’s Singh family, who are featured on the CBC television documentary series Bollywed. “They were thoughtful and open and full of best practices,” says Janie Goldstein, special advisor, family business, at the Ted Rogers School. “We had a waitlist.”

The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) has created an academic award for a student in the program.

“We are hopeful that this will be the start of a knowledge exchange with STEP Canada,” Goldstein says. “We’ve started to form additional partnerships. We’ve signed an official partnership with Family Enterprise Canada. There are a lot of opportunities for service providers to become partners with us.”

Schulich School of Business, York University

Also in Toronto, York University’s Schulich School of Business offers a specialization in Entrepreneurial & Family Business Studies.

“Each year we have, quietly, members of wealthy families who are next-generation managers of the family wealth coming through the school, showing a keen interest in learning about the venture capital space and technology investing and business models,” says adjunct professor Chris Carder, executive director of the Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship and co-director of entrepreneurial studies.

Students can choose from a range of courses tailored to venture capital and private equity taught by instructors who are practitioners, Carder says.

“These classes are not being taught from a research perspective; they’re very practical,” he says. For example, a course called Mentorship Match puts students into working relationships with senior venture capitalists for 18 hours per week.

For people who are now out of school and working in their family office, the school just launched the Schulich Venture Academy, he says. Part of this course is taught by Prashant Matta, “who raised two separate $100 million funds and is one of our alumni.” The venture finance side is taught by Leen Li, former CFO of Wealthsimple.

“We see the family-office group as one of the key audiences that we’d like to serve,” says Carder. “I think there’s a talent wave coming into family offices. They’re looking to bring a new perspective into the family office. Where does that now unlock other streams of opportunity?”

Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta

The University of Alberta established its Alberta Business Family Institute and its Canadian Centre for Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise in the ‘90s, but changes are afoot. The two entities merged in 2022 and are now led by Matt Knight, executive director of the renamed Alberta Business Family Institute at the Alberta School of Business.

“The biggest change has been taking those three elements – research, education and outreach – all under the same leadership purview,” says Knight. He describes three main categories of students: “people interested in a career in advising family enterprise, students who come from business families themselves, and people who are interested in exploring family businesses as a career path.”

The institute offers courses in the BComm and MBA programs, including the European Family Business Tour, a two-week, three-credit tour of Europe “to share knowledge and understanding of how family enterprises work in a more developed ecosystem,” he says.

A brand-new offering is a two-day course in Transforming Family Business With AI. The institute has also developed a certificate in family business – sessions will launch Jan. 25-26, 2024, in Edmonton and February 7-8 in Calgary.

The school’s annual signature event honouring a business family or family office is evolving to fit the new model. In 2022, the Hay family of Scandinavian Building Services Ltd., a janitorial and maintenance services firm, was featured. “They talked about the family, how the business has changed. For them, it was mainly about the sudden passing of the patriarch,” he says.

“Typically, these events live in a bit of a silo. This year, we were able to invite students from the MBA program. We transcribed and published it … so we are able to use it as a business case, and researchers at the university can use it to fuel their research, so all three feed together,” he says.

The evolution will continue, says Knight: “We’re having discussions with family-business centres across North America about what family-office programming could look like, and combining those together.”

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