Amy Schuman
schuman@thefbcg.com
P: 847-207-1743
Areas of Expertise
- Managing Family Business Paradoxes
- Designing & Implementing Governance Frameworks
- Communication & Conflict Resolution
- Next Generation Development
- Leadership Development & Coaching
- Succession & Continuity Planning
- Team Building
- Managing the Challenges of Cousin Transitions
- Evolving from a Family Business to a Family Enterprise
Families in business together carry extra burdens. It’s hard enough to be a loving, strong family these days, but the added responsibilities (and rewards!) of sharing an enterprise makes it even tougher. Take time to enjoy what’s going well – to have fun together and simply laugh together, to appreciate all the successes of the past. That gives you fuel to face and solve the challenges in the future.
Resources
- Leadership Evolution: Creating a Culture of Learning and Development in Your Family Office
- Managing Unsolvable Problems: Understanding Paradox
- Welcoming Up and Comers of the Next Generation
- Special Report | Diversity and Inclusion in Family Enterprise: What, Why, and How
- Resolving Longstanding Conflict is Well Worth the Hard Work
- Family Enterprise Superpowers Offer Strength in Tumultuous Times
- Dear Family Business Advisor: Answers to Top Questions about Family Meetings
- Human Resources in Family Business: Maximizing the Power of Your People
- Managing the Complexity of Human Resources in Family Firms
- The Family That Learns Together Stays Together
- Planning for Continuity in Family Business: Where, Oh Where, to Begin?
- Mindfulness Brings Calm, Compassion and Creativity to Family Enterprises
- Achieving Balance: Individual Rights and Family Interests
- Feeling Better about Refusing to Choose between Your Family and Your Business: You Can (and Must) Care for Both!
- Who’s Responsible for What in Career Development
- Going to Work in the Family Business
- Family Employment and Career Guidance: One Size Does Not Fit All
- Women, Communication, and Leadership
- Outsiders: Troublemakers or Truth Tellers?
- How Can We Have More Accountability in Our Family Business?
- Mastering Family Business Polarities: Learning to Manage Dilemmas That Can’t Be Solved
- Honoring Both Family and Business Considerations in Compensation Approaches
- Rotational Systems: An Approach to Career Development
- Bringing Up the Tough Subjects: Shining a Light on Past Conflicts
- Successful Ownership Transitions Rest on Strong, Knowledgeable Shareholders
- Accountability in Family Governance: A Key Variable for Building Trust
- Family Education: Perfect is the Enemy of Good
- Family Education For Business-Owning Families: Strengthening Bonds By Learning Together
- Nurturing the Talent to Nurture the Legacy: Career Development in the Family Business
- Family Business as Paradox
Amy Schuman
A senior advisor of The Family Business Consulting Group, Amy Schuman supports family businesses seeking to maximize success and strength in both their family and their business. For more than 20 years, Amy has helped hundreds of families implement the systems, structures and relationships needed to be effective stewards of their enterprises.
Many clients come to Amy early in their planning process, and she works closely with family members, owners, non-family executives and trusted advisors to facilitate a big picture, long-term strategy for successful continuity. In other cases, the family, owners and/or business are facing a difficult circumstance, even a crisis. In these cases, Amy has the experience and knowledge to chart a path through the tough issues and get to a place where a more strategic, long-term and less emotional approach can be implemented.
Amy has worked with complex family businesses, large and small, across North America and abroad. She has helped families create Family Councils, Ownership Councils, Boards of Directors, Constitutions, Policies and Guidelines, Family Education, Team Building, and many other useful tools and techniques. Rather than following one set consulting approach, Amy sees each family and business as individual, and adapts her approach to the unique needs and opportunities of each client.
As a founding facilitator of the Next Generation Leadership Institute at the Chicago Loyola University Family Business Center, Amy coached young men and women to assume leadership positions in their family businesses. She also founded and facilitated Loyola’s first Peer Advisory Group for Women and taught group process and facilitation skills in Loyola’s Family Business Communication Institute.
Prior to joining FBCG, Amy served as a key non-family executive at Fel-Pro, Inc., a fourth-generation automotive manufacturer. She directed Organization Development, Leadership Development and Total Quality efforts for the firm and helped develop the award-winning corporate culture that led the company to be named among the “Top 10 of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.”
Amy is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Center for Family Enterprise, Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. She has presented at many family business centers across the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as presenting for YPO and WPO events, the Family Firm Institute and the Family Business Network across the globe. She is the co-author of five family business books, including Human Resources in the Family Business: Maximizing the Power of Your People, Family Business as Paradox and Family Education for Business Owning Families.
Education
- B.A. in Psychology, Oberlin College
- MBA, The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
- Completed the Center for Conflict Resolution's 40-hour Performance-Based Mediation Skills Training
Personal
Amy has been a meditation practitioner and student in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition since 2012. She’s volunteered with Chicago-based organizations like Curt’s Café, Uptown Café, and Growing Home.
She climbed Mt. Rainier at age 16, and has lots of outdoor wilderness experience, including sessions with National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in the Wind River Range near Lander, WY and in Baja CA.
Amy and her husband live in Evanston and have three adult children and three brilliant grandchildren. She loves to knit and has taken up drawing and painting.