About Us

Gaia Marchisio, Ph.D., is a family-enterprise researcher, consultant, educator, speaker, and writer with 25+ years of impact across global family enterprises, academic institutions, corporations, public-sector organizations, and others. 

Tricia Philip-Rao is Director at the Global Family Enterprise Program, where she supports both development and implementation of the program’s strategic initiatives. Before joining the program in 2021, she was Assistant Director at the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate, where she managed communications, employment, and student-led programming. Tricia is an accomplished administrator who has worked at the University for more than a decade producing thought-driven content and events.

Patricia Angus, JD, MIA, TEP, is Founder and CEO of Angus Advisory Group LLC, an Adjunct Professor and Founder of the Global Family Enterprise Program Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

Sajjad Ebrahim is the chief executive officer of Lark Investments. Mr. Ebrahim received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Karachi in Pakistan and an MBA from Columbia Business School. In 1977, he bought a small plastics company, Par-Pak, in Toronto, Canada. Over the next 36 years, he painstakingly built the Toronto company into a major industry player with over 900 employees, more than $200 million in revenue, and operations in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. As the owner and president of Par-Pak, Mr.

Mr. Gundlach is the President and co-CEO of Bleichroeder LP. Bleichroeder LP is the successor of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder Holdings, Inc., which was renamed First Eagle Holdings in 2015 after private equity funds managed by The Blackstone Group and Corsair Capital acquired a controlling stake in the company, a transaction Mr. Gundlach initiated.

Principal, Head of Corporate Advisory & Banking
Brown Brothers Harriman

Pierre Mordacq is the Managing Partner of The Gate Technologies, a US, family anchored private investment firm focusing on mature, technology driven companies.

Professor Michael Preston has over 40 years experience working closely with and advising corporate executives of middle market companies, including family-owned businesses and non-profit organizations. His areas of expertise include leadership, management, strategic planning, organizational structure, and change management. For the past 15 years, Professor Preston has been teaching and consulting with growing companies including family businesses.

Gaia Marchisio, Ph.D., is a family-enterprise researcher, consultant, educator, speaker, and writer with 25+ years of impact across global family enterprises, academic institutions, corporations, public-sector organizations, and others. 

Patricia Angus, JD, MIA, TEP, is Founder and CEO of Angus Advisory Group LLC, an Adjunct Professor and Founder of the Global Family Enterprise Program Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

Shai Davidai is Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His research examines people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies the psychological forces that shape, distort, and bias people’s perceptions of the world and their influence on people’s judgments, preferences, and choices. His topics of expertise include the psychology of judgment and decision making, economic inequality and social mobility, social comparisons, and zero-sum thinking.

Kristin Gilbertson is the Chief Investment Officer at Access Industries, a private holding company.  She was previously the Chief Investment Officer for the University of Pennsylvania and a Managing Director at the Stanford Management Company.  She began her investment career at the World Bank in Washington, DC.  Kristin holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from Harvard University.  She has been an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School since 2018. 

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School. He has received Columbia’s highest recognition for teaching, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, and thirteen teaching awards voted by graduating students at Columbia and Cornell Universities. He was the first professor from the Columbia Business School to serve as a Provost’s Senior Faculty Teaching Scholar, a role at Columbia University for exceptional teachers who are also distinguished researchers.

Stephan Meier is currently the chair of the Management Division and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich, was previously a senior economist at the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision-Making at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and taught courses on strategic interactions and economic policy at Harvard University and the University of Zurich. His research interest is in behavioral strategy.

Professor Nissim earned his PhD in Accounting at the University of California, Berkeley, and joined Columbia Business School in 1997. He was granted tenure in 2005, and full professorship in 2007. He served as the Chair of the Accounting Division during the years 2006–2009 and 2014–2016.

Shiva Rajgopal is the Roy Bernard Kester and T.W. Byrnes Professor of Accounting and Auditing at Columbia Business School. He has also been a faculty member at the Duke University, Emory University and the University of Washington. Professor Rajgopal’s research interests span financial reporting, earnings quality, fraud, executive compensation and corporate culture.  His research is frequently cited in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, Financial Times, Business Week, and the Economist.

Daniel Wolfenzon is the Nomura Professor of International Finance at Columbia Business School. He received a Masters and a PhD in economics from Harvard University and holds a BS in economics and a BS in mechanical engineering from MIT. Professor Wolfenzon previously taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and NYU. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests are in corporate finance and organizational economics.

Stephen Zagor is a New York City based Consultant and Educator, focusing on restaurants and food businesses. He has developed an extensive knowledge of the culinary industry, specializing in the business side of food enterprises.

As a consultant Steve has provided comprehensive support to a wide variety of clients including entrepreneurs starting restaurants, food retail businesses and food products. His clients have included large public companies, investment funds, government agencies, lawyers, large restaurant groups and small food business owners.