Nancy is one of CFAR’s five founders and a member of the firm’s Board of Directors. Nancy leads CFAR’s Family and Owner-led Business practice and has been instrumental in the development of CFAR’s approach to strategy. Nancy is known for her expertise as a thinking partner to leaders, successors, and successor candidates across the family enterprise. Nancy helps her clients creatively identify and test options, and then make hard choices, working through the structures, processes, people, and metrics that can enable or stand in the way of productive action. CFAR has effected its own succession process, with a second generation owner serving as President.

Nancy is a founder of the Family Firm Institute (FFI), a global resource created to provide interdisciplinary intelligence, education, and professional development to educators and professionals serving the family business and family wealth fields. She is also an FFI Fellow and served as FFI’s first Treasurer and board member. She is past President of FFI’s Mid-Atlantic chapter. Nancy won the 2012 Richard Beckhard Practice Award from the Family Firm Institute,
which annually honors a founding member and distinguished practitioner in the family enterprise field, recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of family business practice.

Nancy currently serves as Mentor for FFI’s next generation of practitioners, meeting regularly to advance their thinking and practice. She is also a founding member of the 2086 Society, shaping research for future generations. Nancy has lectured widely on topics such as risk, competition and growth, governance, succession, exit and continuity, and leadership and organization development. Her work and ideas have been published in the business press including Sloan Management Review, CEO Magazine, Family Business Magazine, the Journal of Management Consulting, Family Business Review, the New York Times and other publications.

Nancy holds an MBA in Strategy from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.