There's a growing volume of programs involving higher education institutions and business schools aimed at wealth management firms and family offices. The business school at the University of Chicago enters the fray.

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business said yesterday that it has created a family office series of programs.

The Family Office Initiative will support the education, research, and networks for current and future family office leaders throughout the world. Pritzker Private Capital, which focuses on family direct investing, is supporting the launch.

The initiative includes a steering committee and a council of industry leaders and practitioners, featuring, at present, more than 50 family office leaders from some of the most respected family groups in the US and Europe. Among others, the industry experts are made up of Booth alumni, including Morrow Bailey, ’10, managing director at HF Capital; Quan Mac, ’05, CEO and CIO of Greenville Asset Management, a family office for a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based family; and Bob Venable, ’96, president and CEO of the Miami Corporation Management, among several other Booth alumni.

“The boom in family offices across the world has highlighted a need for education and collaboration opportunities among principals and practitioners,” Madhav Rajan, Booth dean and the George Pratt Shultz professor of accounting, said. “True to our history, Booth is leading the way by investing resources in a comprehensive program to support the development of family offices, further extending our global reach in this untapped area.”

“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 and Kessenich E P faculty director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “Despite the importance of the sector, there is relatively little research and teaching directed toward it. The Booth FOI will make progress on both fronts. 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.”

Booth is extending its programming in this space. For nearly 20 years, it has offered the Private Wealth Management program as part of its Executive Education offerings.

John C Heaton, the Joseph L Gidwitz professor of finance at Booth, is one of several Booth faculty members involved with the FOI. He has developed a new MBA course for students interested in this topic – The Family Office. Students who take the course will learn the different roles family offices play, how family offices are structured, how to define goals for investment and distribution, effective leadership, and other important topics. The course will be available for MBA students beginning Winter Quarter 2025. The FOI will support Booth in developing future MBA courses and executive education opportunities under this topic.

The University of Chicago shares a link with the modern family office phenomenon: In 1882, 10 years before oil tycoon John D Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago, he established what is largely considered the first full-service single-family office in the US.

According to a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, the family office sector nearly doubled from 2008 to 2018, with an estimated 10,000 single-family offices and 5,000 multi-family offices worldwide managing nearly $6 trillion in assets. In North America alone, family offices manage about $1.72 trillion in assets, with 79 per cent of family offices involved in impact investing, according to a recent report from the Royal Bank of Canada. The report examined 144 family offices across the US and Canada, finding that 68 per cent of family offices in the region are invested in venture capital, indicative of a deep desire to nurture innovation and entrepreneurship. (It should be noted that there is no consensus on exactly how many family offices there are in the world.)

Such initiatives are not unique. This publication is exclusive media partner with the US-based UHNW Institute which, as reported yesterday, holds a major symposium exploring family wealth matters in November. The Institute has also developed methodologies for measuring and evaluating how to achieve best practice among family wealth advisors.

This news service publishes a summary of all the known post-graduate, MBA and in-house wealth management training courses around the world.

Four years ago, Columbia University rolled out its Master’s in Wealth Management program. In 2019, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law launched a program for training students interested in working for family offices and firms with family office service practices.