Gaia Marchisio

Gaia Marchisio is the Founder and Managing Partner of CARE For Family Enterprise. This interdisciplinary and multiactivity practice includes advising services known as the Family Enterprise ClinicTM, founded in 2014, during her tenure as Executive Director at the Cox Family Enterprise Center and the Aronoff Professor of Family Business at Kennesaw State University. Leveraging research and decades of practice in the field, she introduced a safe and effective advising method for Clients. Gaia and her colleagues believe that an interdisciplinary advisor team can adequately capture and address family enterprise complexity. Therefore, by building a bench of experts with high competence and emotional intelligence, trained to understand and manage systems, the team collaborates closely to tailor sustainable processes to impact them genuinely and positively around the globe.

A discerning facilitator, renowned educator, esteemed speaker, innovative researcher, author, and compassionate and caring resource, Gaia is a force of positivity for family enterprises and their advisors.

Marchisio's teaching experience and passion expand past the traditional classroom walls by developing degree and nondegree programs to educate all members of a business's owning family. Additionally, she has served as program committee chair, member, and moderator for family enterprise workshops, seminars, and conferences around the world.

Gaia brings energy, wit, profound intuition, and stunning insight to her work with family enterprises' professional advisors too. In Southeast Asia, in 2013, she created and offered the first program for the local advisors’ community, and then extended the depth and breadth of the curriculum, once back in the US in 2014. Since 2016, she has been faculty of the Canada-based Program Family Enterprise Advisors, the only designation for professional in the field.

She has also served as a learning consultant to institutions and associations serving family firms. Such organizations include International Finance Corporation (IFC - World Bank Group); Inter- America Investment Corporation; Credit Suisse; Grant Thorton; Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Banking Group.

Gaia’s wealth of experience has grown amongst enterprising families and organizations around the globe. Over the years, she has been a visiting faculty member in numerous Family Business Centers in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. In addition, she collaborated with the Family Business Network International for several years, co-founding its Next-Gen group; and served as the Chief Learning Officer for the Family Business Network Academy in Asia. Today, she presents at conferences worldwide, develops content for Next Generation Conferences, and organizes and moderates global meetings for family enterprise leaders (i.e., Southeast Family Office Forum, SEFOF, Young Professional Organization - YPO and Entrepreneurs’ Organization - EO).

Currently, she has an appointment as Adjunct Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School, in New York.

Her aptitude in international contexts also extends to her research and consulting. She participated in research projects with international partners from academic and professional environments.

As an author, in addition to academic publications, her most recent creation is an innovative book on ownership development in family enterprises, Own it! How to Develop a Family Enterprise Owner’s Mindset at Every Age, coauthored with Wendy Sage-Hayward and Barb Dartt. The new insights and perspectives on how to rethink ownership and its succession have been integrated into frameworks for more effective decision-making in enterprising families.

A fourth-generation successor in her own family business, her foundation instilled a strong sense of compassion and empathy. At the same time, her academic and professional training has given her the perspective to reach beyond her own experiences and fully dedicate herself to families, their enterprises, and advisors.

As a native of Milan, Italy, and a naturalized US citizen, fluent in English, Spanish and Italian, Gaia has a strong passion for understanding, respecting, and interacting in different cultures.