This week, I am delighted to welcome Scott Saslow, Founder and CEO of Palo Alto, CA-based ONE WORLD Investments Inc., which provides investment capital and advisory services to help organizations scale social impact. Over his career, Scott has been a founder or founding team member of seven start-up businesses. Prior to ONE WORLD, Scott was the Founder & CEO of The Institute of Executive Development, supporting executives in Global 2000 organizations including American Express, Blackrock, Intel, Time Warner, and the US Navy, and earlier in his career, he worked at Siebel Systems and Microsoft Corporation in leadership roles. Scott has authored over twenty-five articles for publications such as Forbes and Directorship and has been interviewed by and quoted in Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek.

Scott expounds on the concept of “sustainability” as it pertains to a family office, and he provides his definition of a sustainable family office and explains why sustainability is important in this context. Having emphasized how important this objective is for the family, Scott then talks about how families and family offices pursue sustainability and how they prepare for it and how they achieve it. He outlines the many dimensions and ways to make a family office sustainable.

Scott is just about to release his new book Building a Sustainable Family Office, which is an excellent, and to some extent, autobiographical, compendium of everything families need to know or consider as they create or take over a family office. The book is organized around and culminates in the definition of what Scott refers to as “the five key elements of success.” Scott gives us a sneak peek into what the five elements are and how each of them contributes to the long-term success of the family and its family office.

Sustainability is also often referred to as an investment philosophy and a values system. Scott shares his views about how families can connect their aspiration for sustainable investing with their effort to build and operate a sustainable family office.

Don’t miss this insights-packed conversation with a rising-gen owner of a family enterprise, a successful entrepreneur and wealth creator, and a proponent of family sustainability and positive impact.

Today, it is my pleasure and honor to speak with Prof. Maarten de Groot, Endowed Chair of Resilient Family Businesses & Enterprise Families at VU Amsterdam School of Business and Economics. Prior to completing his PhD at VU Amsterdam in 2021, Maarten had a long and distinguished career in wealth management. He co-founded and ran one of Europe’s largest and most innovative multi-family offices, VermogensGroep, which was acquired by UBS in 2008, and later he was Executive Chairman of Eligius, the single-family office of the Goldschmeding family in the Netherlands.

Maarten was knighted by the King of the Netherlands for his contributions to society, and is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including the 2022 Sustainable Investments Award, the 2023 Business Impact Award, and the 2023 VU Crowds Award. He is the founder and director of the VU Center for Enterprise Family Research and is the program director of the Responsible Ownership for Enterprise Families (ROEF) executive education program at VU Amsterdam, which was created and run in partnership with FOX.

Maarten has studied and worked with multigenerational families for decades and has identified many of the key topics and priorities that successful families focus on. He shares some of the most important factors and themes that define and propel families’ journeys through time and across generations.

Possibly the most universal topic that is relevant to all families across the globe and throughout time is preparing the next generation for the future stages of the family journey. Maarten talks about how he sees the importance and centrality of engaging and preparing the rising gen to play a meaningful role in their family enterprise.

One important practical suggestion Maarten has for families, and especially for the younger members of the rising gen, is to understand and develop their relationship with wealth. He highlights some of the key challenges rising gen members face and what they can do to overcome them in order to see their role as wealth owners in a positive and healthy way.

Maarten spearheaded the development of the ROEF Academy (Responsible Ownership for Enterprise Families) program – an innovative, world-class educational program, designed jointly by VU Amsterdam and FOX. We just successfully concluded our first year and graduated the first cohort of young next-gen family members. Maarten offers an overview of the ROEF program, its mission and design, and how it helps rising gen owners identify and prepare for their role in the family enterprise.

Do not miss this deeply insightful conversation with one of the most distinguished thought leaders in the multigenerational family wealth space. Maarten is a celebrated academic researcher and educator, a successful entrepreneur and family office executive, and a globally recognized practitioner and advisor to many enterprise families across the globe.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Michael Whelchel, Founder and CEO of Big Path Capital, a boutique investment bank working with positive impact companies and funds and pursuing a mission to challenge the status quo and raise the expectations of capitalism. Prior to founding Big Path, Micheal had 15-year career in private equity holding leadership positions at several firms, including Morris Capital Management and Stony Point Group.

We start by discussing the big idea behind Michael’s work – what he calls “leveraging capitalism”. Michael explains what that means, elaborating on the challenges and the opportunities he sees with how capitalism operates today and how it could or should operate.

Michael founded Big Path Capital to advance this vision for the future of capitalism. He talks about how his firm differs from other investment intermediaries, how he sees his purpose and mission in the marketplace, and what he is doing to advance this mission and achieve his vision for capitalism.

For families, family offices, and other private capital investors in the marketplace who are interested in embracing impact investing as a superior way of deploying capital, Michael offers a number of practical tips to get them started on the right path. He also describes how families can get engaged in this mission by attending the annual Impact Capitalism Summit he and his firm host in Nantucket each year. Michael shares an overview of this unique event and provides suggestions for how family members and family offices who are active investors can get involved, contribute to, and benefit from this gathering.

Enjoy this informative conversation with one of the most active and innovative champions of impact capitalism in the private capital space.