The family business experiences
Students give their final presentation for the Family Business Futures event
In the Family Business Management course at the Quinlan School of Business, students are learning how to become successful leaders in family businesses, and they’re learning from the most experienced people they know: their fellow classmates and families.
Experience from within
Quinlan’s Family Business Center, comprised of faculty, facilitators, and experts who guide, coach and support family businesses and education, noticed the next generation of workers is expressing less interest in joining family businesses. With the Family Business Management course, students are invited into that world and learn how they can fit.
Business leadership can take many forms, and with a family business, it could look like your mother or brother. Students navigate how family businesses fit into society, how they’re governed, and how conflict and transition is handled.
“It’s very different from publicly traded companies,” said instructor Kathy McCauley, who is a fourth-generation family business operator.
About half of her students have family businesses and are making decisions on whether they would like to take part in them. To help make that picture clearer, those students are bringing their families into the classroom to learn from each other.
“I think a big learning impact is coming from our speakers. Students are hearing true, heart-felt stories,” McCauley said.
Those stories can be difficult. One family member, a mother of a student, shared how when she lost her husband, she was swiftly put in charge of a business that she knew little about.
“She had to learn very quickly how to keep the business going while trying to grieve and take care of her kids,” McCauley said.
“In those storytelling moments, students really understand that while working with family can be hard, working with your family also helps you work through the hard things that happen to everyone.”
Hands-on learning
Throughout the semester, McCauley’s students put themselves in the driver’s seat of running a company. In small groups, students built a company of their choosing. As the semester progresses, they are challenged to navigate issues from governance questions to family succession. Students soon begin to realize what it takes to make a family business function.
“You start hearing them really understand what their business is about and how their family interactions are working for or against the business,” McCauley said.
The idea is to give students a chance to “try on” working in a family business. For students still deciding if they want to join their family’s business, the in-class company offers a small insight into how their lives could look. For other students, they gain a perspective on working in and alongside family businesses.
Voicing their thoughts
At the end of the semester, students shared their perspectives on family businesses with community leaders with Quinlan’s Family Business Center in the “Family Business Futures” event. At Family Business Futures, students shared reflections from their class to Family Business Center members and engaged in discussions about how Gen Z is approaching family businesses.
“It’s Gen Z talking about Gen Z and sharing with the current generation what they should be thinking about to draw in Gen Z,” McCauley said.
The presentations serve as the students’ final exams. Following their presentations, students heard from local family business leaders Brian Ortiz and his daughter Kaitlyn Ortiz of construction firm Nacional Group. Together, they shared how Brian learned mechanical contracting working for his father Darrell Ortiz. Later, Brian would take the leap to start his own general contracting business, Nacional Group. Kaitlyn would join too, learning business firsthand alongside her business studies.
Their evening concluded with food and networking. Two students, Karsen Spoo (BBA ’26) and Santiago Gutierrez (BBA ’26), made connections with the Ortiz’s. Following their graduation, they were hired by Nacional. Together, students and the Family Business Center are working to shape an environment where future generations are motivated and prepared to thrive in a family business environment.