The co-president of the Family Office Association (FOA), Jennifer Katrulya is a partner at Citrin Cooperman, a national advisory and CPA firm, where she is responsible for developing strategic and channel relationships for the firm. She has 28 years of experience working with clients across the United States and internationally — including leading private equity and venture capital firms, health care organizations, high-growth technology companies, real estate development companies and real estate investment management firms, family offices, and a wide range of other clients.
Can you describe FOA’s new mission statement?
The Family Office Association's mission is aligned with its vision statement: "Unite, Thrive, Give: Preserve Legacies While Empowering Tomorrow to Better the World." We want our members to feel like they are part of an extended family and support system that "raises all ships" through a combination of live and digital events, thought leadership, best-practice resources and concierge support. There is a time and place to be in the presence of top national and global speakers and in more formal learning and business environments, and we are thrilled to offer that to our members. Our members and friends include some of the most respected multigenerational family offices, entrepreneurs, entertainers, athletes, dealmakers and other powerhouse business minds in the world. This commitment to innovation, growth, collaboration and success is very much a part of the culture of FOA and is closely tied to our mission.
It is also critically important that we offer a culture that feels very "family style," where members have opportunities to build true connections, collaboration and meaningful friendships. We are seeing that evolve in a pretty significant way, which is exciting. An increasing number of our Family Office and Resource Council members have actually started to plan their 2024 calendars around being able to attend FOA events, invite other families and make FOA an important part of their lives.
How does FOA view impact?
Mike Packman, FOA's chairman, is a firm believer in "doing well by doing good." He is involved in a number of philanthropic efforts and is very committed to helping improve the world we live in while continuing to achieve his own personal and professional success. So that is already a significant part of the culture of FOA that Rush Olney and I were introduced to as we became co-presidents of FOA. We then found that family offices, top universities, influential charitable organizations and foundations, and others, were asking for our input about opportunities to collaborate across the network, asking for introductions and wanting to find ways to come together. This led to the formation of the FOA Global Impact Community, one of several peer groups we are launching. The Global Impact Community will have 25 initial Founding Leadership Council members, including family office leaders, representatives from several universities, corporate and nonprofit leaders, and others who are already driving significant change and improvements. The council will meet monthly initially and then several times each year to discuss opportunities for the FOA community to continue to help "better the world," participate in setting the calendar of events and much more.
What do you have lined up for the 2024 season in terms of events?
FOA has been known for hosting and participating in a wide range of phenomenal events over the years, and that will certainly continue! We are committed to bringing our Family Office and Resource Council members together in a number of ways. Our access to top national and global speakers, thought leaders and other resources is setting the stage for what we are confident will be among the top family office events in the world in the year ahead. In 2024, this will include small group events at local restaurants and private homes, our seasonal retreats, master classes and salon events, small group adventures and trips, and peer community events.
How does lifestyle and wellness fit into programming for FOA?
This is something we will be speaking about a lot in 2024. As part of FOA's commitment to truly being a community for family offices and wealth accumulators, this includes helping each other live our best lives. I'll take this question to a bit more personal level than some of the others because I think it is really important as part of the heart of FOA's culture going forward. Some of FOA's leadership, as well as many of our members, are lifelong athletes; they are very focused on healthy eating, meditation and other things that they feel allow them to function at their best and enjoy long, productive lives. Personally, I am a doting auntie and want to be sure I am able to spend many years with my young niece and nephew. That said, nutrition and fitness are not things that were strengths in my upbringing and have been lifelong challenges for me. As a very real community of families helping families and making the most of our significant access to resources and support, we want to share these conversations openly and make this one more way we come together as an extended family. This of course also extends to supporting mental health and other aspects of wellness.
When it comes to lifestyle, this is where we want to have some fun! In our community of dealmakers, travelers, adventure seekers and families who are making positive changes in the world, we want to share and learn! Whether it's discussions about finance, travel, entertainment, fashion (couture, plus-size, fashion weeks and more), sports, or other interests, or more serious topics such as helping our family members age as comfortably and productively as possible, these will be active discussions and part of our events going forward.
Our next "Lifestyle and Wellness" event will be at Art Basel in Miami just next week!
When you look to the next several years, what are your goals for building out the organization?
The goals are really to achieve what we've set out in our vision and mission statements. As FOA continues to help families "Unite, Thrive and Give," we will be able to see the ways the community helps to improve and support the lives of our members and friends and increase the ways the community is able to share our success and resources with a world that desperately needs our help.
The latest trends in how family offices use technology
By FRANCOIS BOTHA
In another transformative year for the family office software industry — and for the entire tech industry — artificial intelligence is unquestionably the current driving force for innovation and disruption. Thanks to the accessibility of applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, unveiled almost exactly one year ago, anyone with an internet-connected device has been able to explore the powerful capabilities that generative AI has unleashed. 
While many tech companies were already busy integrating AI, the ChatGPT revelation immediately compelled those laggards to find ways to integrate its capabilities, not just to enhance their existing offerings but also to expand on them through new AI-driven functionality.
In the most recent Simple report on the family office software and technology sector, these and other trends are tracked using both qualitative and quantitative research to offer a practical and accessible snapshot of the current state of the industry. Through extensive online surveys and in-depth conversations with family offices and leading technology service providers, the research highlights five key areas of development making the most impact.
Technology integration and professionalization
Family offices have been slower to adopt technology, with many continuing to use legacy tools for wealth management and operations. While seemingly obvious and very much in line with digital transformation across industries, 2023 was the year that almost unanimously saw family offices either implement new technology or commit to finding technology to meet its needs amid an industrywide desire to professionalize.
The next-gen influence
The urgency to professionalize through technology is in part driven by the increased involvement of the next generation of the wealthy. They’re more technology-savvy by nature, and many bring their own financial industry experience into the family office. As a result, a demand for solutions that deliver real-time insights and can incorporate all asset types is now standard. Though varying by region, the next gen is also behind an increased demand for more socially responsible wealth management practices.
Impact and ESG integration
Though environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact investing have become vilified in some quarters, those concepts are now mainstream within family office wealth management platforms. Whether through the platform’s own functionality or through data supplied via third-party connections, the demand is there, and service providers don’t see it reducing any time soon.
Emphasis on AI
Over 75% of the technology service providers focused on delivering family office solutions are currently incorporating AI functionality or planning its deployment, meaning the evolution evident in the past year is set to continue into 2024. While there was an almost universal desire to unlock greater capability through AI, many service providers specifically noted that they didn’t intend to introduce its capabilities until it aligned perfectly with their core purpose.
Continued growth potential
Despite the growth in family office software and technology, many family offices report that while they’re assessing all the options, they have not yet adopted a chosen solution. This indicates considerable room for growth in this sector as these companies discover the best-fit solutions for what is often an evolving list of needs.
Aside from these five key factors, the growth in the industry and pressure on technology service providers to meet such evolving needs are highlighted through the fact that 73% of surveyed software providers have expanded their workforce in the past year, with 40% establishing a presence in new regions to better serve an expanding customer base.
Along with four years of consistently reported year-on-year revenue growth, the picture is very much one of a maturing market. This justifies both the long-term commitment that existing service providers have to delivering solutions and the proliferation of new solution providers seen entering the market.
It will be interesting to track how things look a year from now. But with the growing number of family offices established worldwide and the need for solutions set to increase in line with this, it’s clear that the industry is rapidly evolving, with more crossover solutions and a continued demand for innovation.