A new chair position has been created at the University of Ottawa to expand Canada’s contribution to international research in the area of family enterprise.
Peter Jaskiewicz, founder and director of the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI) at the university’s Telfer School of Management, has been named its first Patricia Saputo Distinguished Chair in Family Enterprise.
The position was funded via a $5 million gift made earlier this year from Patricia Saputo, the co-founder, executive chairperson and strategic advisor of the business-family advisory Crysalia in Montreal.
This is an important moment for research into family enterprise, Saputo says: “We’re at an inflection point, the biggest transference of wealth in history. One trillion dollars are going to be passing over as the baby boomers are passing away or gifting as they’re living.”
She chose FELI as the site of the new position because of her admiration for the work of Jaskiewicz, who shares “a lot of the same values that I have in terms of what we want to do with learning, research, teaching and development with the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute,” she says.
“We both believe that building trust and relationships is the key. Whether that is within the families themselves or with the people that they work with, you need to have alliances with those who share your objectives so that you can work with the same common goals for the success of the family,” says Saputo.
Jaskiewicz says the creation of the new position will enable FELI’s work on the international stage.
“This is the vital foundation for building what we call a centenary institution; it will be here for generations to come,” he says. “It will provide funds that we can use to pursue our mission, the three pillars of the institute: thought leadership, creating safe spaces for the community and in particular several ‘Hercules projects.’”
Last month, Jaskiewicz was also named as the 2024 recipient of the International Award from the Boston-based Family Firm Institute (FFI). The award recognizes individuals or organizations for “outstanding achievement in furthering the understanding of international issues and global networks in multi-generational, family-owned enterprise.”
New research into founders’ mental health
Among those ‘Hercules projects’ is a new research partnership focused on the mental health of family-enterprise owners, which is being conducted by FELI in collaboration with the Family Business Network (FBN) and the Global Family Business Center (GFBC) at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), both based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It will be carried out by Jaskiewicz and Elizabeth Tetzlaff of FELI, Peter Vogel, a professor at IMD, and Alexis du Roy de Blicquy, CEO of the Family Business Network.
Jaskiewicz says the study will attempt to understand the severity of the problem and look for best practices that family offices and businesses can use to deal with mental-health concerns.
“We are working to launch a global survey and to follow up with interviews and in-depth studies over the next few years,” he says. The partnership is expected to present a report at a Family Business Network summit in Miami in November of 2025.
“Everything we do is with and for the families. It’s clear that this is a very important topic for them,” says Jaskiewicz. “In a quickly changing world, stress can take its toll, and family-business owners are just people. We are looking at how these owners can use best practices to become more resilient in these moments.”
The ultimate goal of this type of international research, Saputo says, is to learn from “families that have been around a lot longer, like in Europe, where they have transitions of wealth from generation to generation. What is the key learning that can help other families?” Supporting family businesses supports the economy in general, too, she points out, “so it’s the bigger picture.”
“We want to always be the speedboat,” Jaskiewicz says, “to move ahead and address the urgent needs of the community.” The establishment of this new position is “one of the signs of moving forward to establishing something that will hopefully be here for generations to come.”
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