Family Enterprise Insights

Tucked between 86th and 87th on Amsterdam Avenue, Barney Greengrass is a classic Upper West Side deli counter known for its smoked fish, fresh bagels, and pickled specialties. It's also a family business that's stayed in the same family for four generations, since 1908.

They All Came to Barneys: Personal History of the World's Greatest Store, a recently released memoir by Gene Pressman, traces three generations of his family's ownership of the retailer his grandfather Barney founded in 1923. It's a story of ambition, expansion, and legacy: how far a family will go to build something extraordinary, and what happens when that growth eventually outpaces what it was meant to protect. Three things worth carrying into the read: ambition compounds quietly across generations, expansion rarely feels reckless in the moment it's decided, and a family enterprise carries weight no balance sheet can capture. The question worth asking: at what point does the ambition that builds a company become the risk that ends it?

Brittany Shyne's Seeds, winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and a 2026 Academy Award shortlistee, offers an intimate look at centennial Black farming families in the American South. It is a story of land, inheritance, and the quiet work of deciding what gets passed down, and what gets lost along the way.

Netflix's Dynasty: The Murdochs offers a rare look inside one of the world's most scrutinized family enterprises, and a documentary that the series Succession was reportedly inspired by. The film traces the succession tensions, internal family dynamics, and governance challenges that have defined one of media's most powerful dynasties. It is candid, compelling, and at times uncomfortable in the way that only real family stories can be. This month we are particularly proud to note that Global Family Enterprise Program co-founder Patricia Angus appears in the final episode as a Family Trust Consultant, bringing her expertise directly into the conversation.