Consultant, The Family Business Consulting Group

Aileen brings a multi-disciplined and integrated approach to her work, including 20 years of experience in complex financial and estate planning for business-owning families. She holds the Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Family Enterprise Advisor (FEA), Certified Coach (ACC), and Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) designations.

Leveraging this unique blend of knowledge and professional experience, Aileen is a tremendous resource to the families she works with. She helps families design and implement strategies and processes that help them flourish across generations, both from a commercial and a relationship perspective. Her clients span various industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, food service, real estate, land development and property management.

Aileen is particularly passionate about working with siblings to overcome relationship challenges and help them become good business partners. She often finds herself coaching them through conflict and relationship barriers and helps siblings learn to “gel together” as a team. Through her work, she has found that many families fall into communication patterns that undermine their relationships and business goals. Aileen’s focus on coaching the family as a system is highly engaging and provides the understanding, tools, and skills necessary to manage conflict, rebuild trust, and have difficult conversations in new ways.

Her family business roots stem from a family history in farming. As a young entrepreneur, she launched her first start-up with new venture capital at the age of 25 and sold her first business a few years later. She then became a District Manager for The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, where she saw the need for specialized planning for family business. Aileen has been involved with several businesses since then and has had many interesting and also some challenging life experiences that have instilled in her a sense of resilience, gratitude, and hope, which she generously shares with the families she works with.

Aileen is co-author of Inspired Wealth, Financial Leadership for the 21st Century, a book that serves as a guide for making critical life choices about money to create a fulfilling life. Her guidance has helped hundreds of families through the unique opportunities and challenges they face in the areas of inter-generational wealth transfer, business succession planning, estate planning and philanthropy.