The University of Chicago shares a unique and little-known connection with what has become the modern family office.
In 1882, ten years before John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago, he established what is largely considered the first full-service single family office in the United States. A single family office manages the wealth and affairs of wealthy families, handling investments, financial planning, taxes, estate management, and other services tailored to a family’s needs.
Working with trusted advisor Frederick T. Gates, Rockefeller bypassed hiring the expensive firms of the day to manage his family’s business affairs, opting instead to create a novel wealth management infrastructure that included professional and administrative staff to handle his and his family’s wealth management needs.
Other prominent and affluent families of the day followed Rockefeller’s lead and created family offices to oversee their financial affairs, investments, and philanthropic activities. Today, the wealthiest individuals—from Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg—depend on family offices to manage their affairs.
In the spirit of that historical connection, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business is proud to announce the creation of a new Family Office Initiative—one of the first comprehensive programs focused on family office leaders at a major academic institution.
The FOI at Chicago Booth will support the education, research, and networks for current and future family office leaders throughout the world, allowing them to capitalize on the research-driven insights of Booth’s faculty, as well as the resources of the initiative’s collaborators.
Today’s family office leaders have distinct needs and dynamics. While most other similar programs tend to focus largely on the family business, Booth’s new FOI exclusively targets the growing and increasingly important family office sector and its leaders.
The Family Office 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 United States and Europe. These industry experts form the core of the network mission of the initiative, and they include several 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.
“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.”
“For 125 years, Chicago Booth has produced pathbreaking ideas with lasting impact and trained generations of leaders who have helped shape the world of business. The boom in family offices across the world has highlighted a need for education and collaboration opportunities among principals and practitioners,” says Madhav Rajan, Booth dean and the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting. “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 creation of the Family Office Initiative at Booth is driven by a significant surge in the family office sector, and coincides with an era marked by the ascendance of entrepreneurship. It also emerges against the backdrop of an unprecedented demographic shift, with millennials poised to claim the mantle of the wealthiest generation in history over the next two decades.
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 multifamily offices worldwide managing nearly $6 trillion in assets.
In North America alone, family offices manage about $1.72 trillion in assets, with 79 percent 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 United States and Canada, finding that 68 percent of family offices in the region are invested in venture capital, indicative of a deep desire to nurture innovation and entrepreneurship.
On the wealth transfer side, millennials are set to inherit as much as $90 trillion in assets before 2044 from their baby boomer and Silent Generation family members. This shows the family office model will continue to be a growing investment vehicle for well-to-do families in the coming years.
“The family office sector has grown markedly in the last twenty years and should continue to grow. As a result, it is now a meaningful part of the investing universe.”
“The family office sector has grown markedly in the last twenty years and should continue to grow. As a result, it is now a meaningful part of the investing universe,” says 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.”
Most family office resources are service providers or institutions that often sell a product. Few leading academic institutions have the resources to study and support family offices, and none have a comprehensive program—until now.
By leveraging its close connection to Booth’s esteemed faculty and their cutting-edge thought leadership, the FOI will generate interest in family office research and support the development of research insights to benefit the global family office sector. During the spring and summer of 2024, faculty members at Booth began to formulate early-stage research topics into this growing and under-researched sector. With supporting research central to its mission, the Family Office Initiative will provide faculty members at Booth with the resources needed to produce groundbreaking research in this area.
In addition to creating the Family Office Initiative Council, the FOI will also organize events and assist in crafting new curriculum for MBA students and Executive Education participants at Booth. Collectively, these efforts will help establish the Family Office Initiative as a world leader in family office research, education, and network.
The focused curriculum on the unique needs and requirements of family offices is a key area of emphasis for the initiative. While family businesses can recruit top-tier talent from industries outside of finance, and portfolio managers can recruit rising stars from investment banks, family offices require a blend of talent. A top family office needs a team that can not only relate to the needs and desires of a potentially complex family situation, but also one that competes for returns against professional asset managers with significant resources at their disposal.
“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. That is what makes Booth ideal for this initiative.”
“There is substantial demand in the market for talented, well-educated family office professionals, insightful family office research, and in particular for an unbiased, non-commercial forum to have a free and open exchange of ideas among family office leaders,” says Paul Carbone, AB ’83, cofounder and vice chairman at family investment firm Pritzker Private Capital and a member of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees. “Building our initiative on a powerhouse academic platform like Booth also will allow family office leaders to share in the cutting-edge, intellectual capital generated at the school and across a leading institution like UChicago. 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. That is what makes Booth ideal for this initiative.”
Booth is extending its current programming in this space. For nearly 20 years, the school 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 Family Office Initiative. In his new MBA course—The Family Office—students 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.
With network being a central part of the FOI, Booth is planning a Family Office Summit in May 2025. The invite-only event will bring together 200 current and future family office leaders to foster a collaborative learning environment free from solicitations and centered on academic excellence. Leveraging the network and strengths of the University of Chicago, the summit will offer a conference experience that stands out distinctly within the industry. An event agenda and list of speakers will be announced later this year.
“The creation and launch of the Family Office Initiative is the result of a lot of great work from many people, including from those on our steering committee as well as faculty and staff at Booth,” Carbone says. “Their time and work to get us here will help ensure that we fulfill our mission of supporting the education, research, and network needs of current and future family office leaders throughout the world.”
To learn more about the Family Office Initiative, including information about the steering committee and the Family Office Summit taking place May 2025, visit the Family Office Initiative section of the Booth website.
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