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Biography
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For 35 years, Dennis has helped families manage
the personal and organizational issues that lead to successful and
fulfilling transfer of businesses, wealth, values, commitments and
legacies between generations. He is co-chair of the doctoral program in
Organizational Systems, and professor of Organizational Systems
and Psychology at Saybrook University in San
Francisco, and an associate with the consulting firm Relative
Solutions. Dennis received his BA in Philosophy, MA in
Management and Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University.
As both an organizational consultant and clinical psychologist, he is
one of the architects of the emerging field of family enterprise
consulting. As a founding member of the Family Firm Institute, he has
presented at many of their annual conferences, served on their board,
written frequently for their journal Family Business Review,
and was awarded the Richard Beckhard Award for
contributions to practice. In 2007 he was named Thinker in
Residence for S. Australia, where he worked to help the
region design a strategic plan for the future of their entrepreneurial
and family businesses.
He is the author of Working with the Ones You Love: Building
a Successful Family Business; and co-author of Working
with Family Businesses: A Guide for Professional Advisors, as
well as 12 other management books, including Getting Your
Organization to Change, Rekindling Commitment, and Take This Job and
Love it!
He has helped financial advisors and wealth managers in a number of
firms to develop the skills to serve the personal needs of their client
families. He is the co-creator of the Relative Solutions
Enterprising Family Sustainability Index, the Aspen
Family Business
Inventory, the Aspen Family Wealth Inventory,
and other tools for assessment of family enterprise success.
Dennis was one of the four principals of Relative Solutions which,
together with
Wilmington Trust Company and Campden Press, produced the study The
New
Wealth
Paradigm: How affluent women are taking control of their futures.
His
research on the governance of start-up companies, After
the Term Sheet, has been reprinted numerous times, and is an
important contribution to the field of entrepreneurship. He is a
regular contributor to magazines such as Families in
Business, Worth and Family Business. He
was awarded the Editor's Choice Award in 2005
for his article on family business strategic planning for the Journal
of Financial Planning.
In 1984 he founded Changeworks Global, a consulting firm in San
Francisco, where he worked with organizations and family businesses
about long-term change to build competitive advantage by unleashing the
power of their employees. In 1990-92 he served as Deputy Director of
Research for the Macarthur Foundation Network on Healthy
Companies. His video, Managing People through Change,
was voted one of the Best Products of 1991 by the magazine Human
Resource Executive. His work has been featured in Inc.
magazine, Entrepreneur, Nation's Business, Time and
The Wall Street Journal, and
he has been profiled in People magazine.
He is active in non-profit governance, serving on the boards of the
World Business Academy, Saybrook Graduate School, and the Center for
Mind-Body Medicine.
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