The University of Chicago Booth School of Business has launched the Family Office Initiative (FOI), an education, research and networking program for the global family office sector.
MBA students will be able to take the family office course starting in the winter of 2025, with topics such as family office structures, purpose, effective leadership and defining investment goals. Additional courses will be made available in the future, with potential topics being family psychology and dynamics, risk management, asset allocation and governance.
“The family office sector has grown markedly in the last 20 years and should continue to grow. As a result, it is now a meaningful part of the investing universe,” said Steven Neil Kaplan, the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago. “We plan to include a research effort that will help us better understand the sector, and the research will help inform the materials and resources we produce to help family office leaders manage and run their offices.”
The FOI will also include events, starting with the invite-only Family Office Summit , scheduled for May 13-14, 2025, and expected to gather 200 current and future family office leaders.
The Family Office Initiative Steering Committee consists of 50 industry leaders including Pritzker Private Capital co-founder Paul Carbone, Greenville Asset Management CEO Quan Mac and Morrow Bailey, managing director of the Haslam family office HF Capital.
“There is substantial demand in the market for talented, well-educated family office professionals; insightful family office research; and in particular for an unbiased, noncommercial forum to have a free and open exchange of ideas among family office leaders,” Carbone said. “There really are no comprehensive family office academic programs like the one we envision. Booth has the interest, resources and will to quickly become a leader in the growing, dynamic family office industry.”
The University of Chicago holds a historical connection to family offices. The school was founded by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, who is widely considered to have established the first full-service single-family office in the United States in 1882.