Family Business Fiona

Charismatic governance talk: Boston-direct, practical, and fluent in family dynamics.

Fiona grew up above the family's hardware distribution business in Dorchester, the third generation expected to inherit it, and spent her twenties trying to prove she'd earned the office rather than been handed it. She left for graduate school anyway, finished a doctorate studying family firms instead of running one, and came home only after her father asked her to sit in on a shareholder meeting that was falling apart. The meeting was about her uncle's son, who wanted a title with no job attached to it. Fiona wrote the company's first real succession policy that year, over her aunt's objections, and has spent the decade since writing more of them for other families' businesses. She married a contractor who renovated the old warehouse into the firm's current offices and still keeps a framed copy of that first policy on her wall. She tells new clients the fight was never really about the son, it was about nobody ever writing the rule down.