Leaders of family-owned businesses will benefit from skilled support and networking through the newly launched Family Business Program, an initiative under the Ozmen Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business, at the ÐÔ°®ÎåÉ«Ìì, Reno. The program seeks to address challenges unique to these businesses, such as leadership succession and navigating multi-generational dynamics.
The co-chairs of the program themselves bring deep experience working with family-owned businesses. Jeremy Lurey, one of the co-chairs, is founder of a respected firm that provides coaching and consulting to family businesses. The other co-chair, Chris Yount, is entrepreneur in residence at the University and former third-generation chief executive officer of a major family-owned building products company.
Lurey said family-owned firms often face difficult challenges that are different from other businesses.
“Family-owned businesses can be extremely complex organizational structures because of the multi-generation, multi-family branch dynamics between parents and children, siblings and cousins, that play into corporate matters,” he said.
Leadership succession, for instance, can be difficult as founders must learn to mentor a new generation of leaders, while younger family members, in turn, learn the skills needed to perform in challenging, higher-level positions.
Lurey said the new program draws strength from its affiliation with the Ozmen Center for Entrepreneurship and the College of Business. Eren and Fatih Ozmen, whose gift established the center in 2014, themselves are founders of Sierra Nevada Corporation, a thriving family-owned business.
According to Yount, “The Ozmen name carries great respect in the Reno market, and we know the Ozmen family has strong convictions about the importance of family businesses for our communities. The Ozmen Center and the College of Business enable us to focus on innovation and community engagement in a powerful way that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise.”
While the Family Business Program will draw on the expertise of faculty in the College of Business, Yount said participants also will benefit from talking with one another, sharing the best practices they’ve developed as they built family-owned companies.
“We can’t wait to bring together this community to learn with and from one another,” Yount said.
The Family Business Program plans to offer regular networking events, symposiums and educational workshops. It will launch with a webinar exploring the use of artificial intelligence and advanced technologies to modernize family businesses. An in-person symposium, scheduled for April 11, will follow, with additional events planned throughout the year.
The program also seeks to create educational opportunities for students through a student club and other activities such as internships.
Alongside Family Legacy 1st, the program’s corporate sponsors include Whittier Trust and Premier Private Client Insurance Services by Chivaroli. Organizers anticipate additional sponsorships in the coming months.
