Dr. Carol Wittmeyer, advisor of St. Bonaventure’s Family Business Club, will host a family business event next Tuesday, bringing in experts and current family business owners to talk about the topic.
“If you go to work at the New York Times, you are going to work at a family controlled firm,” said Wittmeyer, an associate professor of management. “You will have family business customers, vendors, advisors and probably your lawyers are in family businesses as well.”
Tuesday, Sept. 22 Andrew Keyt, executive director of the Loyola University Chicago Family Business Center, will come to Bonaventure to talk about his new book and facilitate a panel discussion about family business succession. It will take place at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
“At Bonaventure, about 35 percent of students have a parent who owns a business,” said Wittmeyer.
Keyt, who will talk about his book, will focus on different dynamics of family business, which will include how to overcome the obstacles successors commonly tend to face, what successors can do to keep loyal customers, how to build credibility separate from parents and how to develop a unique leadership and business style.
The panel consists of three Bonaventure alumni: Bill Paladino, ’93 (Finance); Mike Lawley, ’92, (Political Science); and Joe Sahlen, ’02, (Accounting) who are the successors to their family businesses.
The alumni panel gives students a chance to ask questions to others who have gone to Bonaventure and are the successors to their family businesses.
“We are excited to have the alums come back because, I think the students can look at them and say this is what I want my future to be,” said Wittmeyer, “They can begin planning on the strategies they will need to use in the future.”
She added the event shows the commitment of Bonaventure alumni.
“We often talk about the Bona alumni network but this is it actually being put into action,” said Wittmeyer “These alum are taking off the whole day. They will talk to them and answer every question they have.”
Two Bonaventure alumni, who are local business owners and successors to their family businesses, will open and close the event: Jim Stitt Jr., ’12, of Cutco Corporation; and Laurie Branch, ’04, of Iroquois Insurance.
fieldsbj14@bonaventure.edu
