Legacy Builders: Strategies for Building Successful Family Enterprises
Cory Gagnon doesn’t just love supporting multi-generational families every day. He loves digging into topics and sharing information that matters to family enterprises! In Legacy Builders: Strategies for Building Successful Family Enterprises, Cory, Senior Wealth Advisor with Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Ltd, dives deep to share ways for business owners, family stewards, and the rising generation in family enterprises to take control of their wealth and build a lasting legacy. Through interviews with industry experts, each episode provides understandable and actionable strategies and insights on complete wealth management. From navigating family dynamics to developing a successful we...
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The Succession Rehearsal: Testing Readiness Before the Moment Arrives
<p>In this episode, Cory Gagnon joins Gavin Brower and Gerry Meyer to discuss what really shapes a successful transition inside a family enterprise. Expectations around leadership, ownership, timing, and readiness can easily drift apart when they remain unspoken. One generation may be thinking about succession while another is still deciding whether they want a role at all. Gavin and Gerry explore how families can surface those differences earlier, create clearer accountability, and build enough trust to have the conversations that are often easiest to postpone.</p><p>Drawing from their experience in organizational leadership, governance, succession, and family enterprise...
The Resilience Tax: Why Family Businesses Invest Before They Need To
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Devin DeCiantis, Managing Partner at Lansberg Gersick Advisors. Devin has spent years studying how family enterprises endure across generations, focusing on governance, risk, and resilience. Our conversation explores how culture and history shape the way families respond to uncertainty, why long periods of stability can create complacency, and what it means to build resilience before a crisis arrives deliberately. We also discuss intergenerational responsibility, migration, institutional trust, and the idea of paying a “resilience tax” today to strengthen an enterprise for tomorrow.</p><p>Devin invites us to consider how families can prepar...
Roots, Wings, and Responsibility: Developing the Judgment to Carry Family Decisions Forward
<p>In this episode, Cory Gagnon is joined by Judi Cunningham and Tom McCullough for a timely conversation on how families can make better decisions together. From estate plans to ownership transitions, it’s rarely the decisions themselves that hold families back; it’s the buildup around them. Roles are unclear. Assumptions go unspoken. And sometimes, one voice dominates when collaboration is what’s really needed. Judi and Tom share what gets in the way, and more importantly, how families can start moving forward with clarity, confidence, and trust.</p> <p>Pulling from years of experience in family systems, governance, and fa...
Built to Bend: Creating Family Cultures That Can Change and Stay Connected
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Katherine Bright, Family Enterprise Consultant at Trella Advisory Group. For nearly two decades, Kathy has helped family businesses navigate the decisions, relationships, and responsibilities that shape continuity across generations. Her work spans consulting, education, and board service, giving her a grounded understanding of the challenges families, boards, and advisors face when certainty gives way to change. Alongside her client work, she teaches and develops training for family enterprise professionals, focusing on leadership, succession, governance, strategy, risk, and productive family relationships. Our conversation explores the role curiosity can play when answers are not ye...
Inherited Vision, Unwritten Future: How the Next Generation Shapes What Comes Next
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Kirby Rosplock, PhD, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Tamarind Learning. With more than 25 years of experience across family wealth, family business, and family office education, Kirby brings the perspective of an advisor, researcher, author, educator, and family member. Our conversation explores the often unspoken work of succession, including what happens when a founder has long been the final yes-or-no, how families prepare for decisions to be shared differently, and why the next generation needs a genuine invitation before responsibility begins to change hands.</p> <p>Kirby brings forward the human side of...
Return on Meaning: Rethinking Wealth Beyond Financial Capital
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Grant Conroy, Portfolio Manager with Genus Capital Management, where he works with families as they think through wealth, purpose, and legacy. With nearly three decades in global financial markets, Grant brings both technical experience and a human perspective to his work. He helps families look beyond the numbers and consider how their wealth can support their purpose, their relationships, and the legacy they hope to build. Our conversation explores what it means to think about wealth not only as capital to manage, but as a resource that can shape how families live, co...
The Architecture of Ownership: How Families Build Structures That Last
<p>In this episode of Legacy Builders Live, Cory Gagnon is joined by Cindy Radu and Leah Tolton to explore what it truly takes to build ownership structures that last. Together, they move beyond the technical aspects of trusts and shareholder agreements, highlighting how structure without shared understanding often falls short. They dive into the difference between preparing owners versus managers, why clarity around what’s owned (and how) matters, and how evolving governance builds resilience across generations.</p> <p>Throughout the conversation, a common thread emerges: enduring ownership isn't achieved through checklists or one-time planning. It's cultivated through intentional ed...
The Next Chair: Governing Tomorrow, Next Generation Leadership in Family Enterprises
<p>In this special panel episode of Legacy Builders, Cory Gagnon is joined by Barb Schimnowsky and James Grieve for a focused conversation on how family enterprises can prepare for next-generation leadership. Drawing from their work in executive search, governance, succession planning, strategy, and family enterprise advising, Barb and James examine what leadership readiness looks like beyond age, title, or family position. They discuss how governance can clarify roles and decision-making, why succession conversations are often delayed, and what families can do before the transition becomes urgent.</p> <p>The conversation also looks at the balance between promoting from within...
Designing for the Life Ahead: How Homes Can Support Every Stage of Family Life
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Sarah Walker, founder and principal designer of Nuance Interior Design, where she creates deeply personalized, wellness-centred estates for families and family offices. With more than 20 years of experience and over 50 multimillion-dollar estates and compounds completed, Sarah brings a rare blend of sophisticated global taste, technical fluency, and systems thinking to her work. Her approach treats the home as a long-term operating system for health, relationships, recovery, focus, and multigenerational well-being. Our conversation explores what it means for a home to feel like a sanctuary while still supporting the full rhythm of everyday li...
Where Wealth Meets Identity: Finding Voice Inside the Family Legacy
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Shay Harris-Pierre, Senior Consultant with Continuity Family Business Consulting, where she works at the intersection of family relationships, wealth, and identity. A clinically trained consultant and therapist, Licensed Professional Counselor, and Certified Financial Therapist, Shay brings nearly fifteen years of experience helping individuals, couples, and families navigate the emotional dimensions of money. Through her work in family enterprise consulting, she supports multigenerational families as they move through questions of succession, governance, identity, and the relational complexities that wealth can create across generations. Our conversation explores how families can better understand the pe...
