Family Prosperity
The NEXUS Working Group on Family Prosperity serves family members and their trusted advisors to help share knowledge, build relationships and create experiences that enhance family prosperity.
Family Prosperity
Many families experience wealth as both a blessing and a burden. The NEXUS Working Group on Family Prosperity serves family members and their trusted advisors to help share knowledge, build relationships and create experiences that enhance family prosperity.
Our vision of “prosperity” includes best practices for family enterprise (including family business, philanthropy & family office) and a focus on helping individual family members flourish. We believe that this vision will maximize prosperity for individuals, families and communities.
Key Questions to Explore
- What are the best practices of families of wealth and influence?
- How can we ensure the well-being of – and an individual identity and purpose for – each family member?
- How do we develop leaders within our family and our enterprise?
- How can we effectively steward and grow our family’s assets?
- How much wealth is enough and what will we do with the rest?
- How can we increase joy and decrease suffering in our communities and around the world?
- How can our family master the “Three G’s” – “Governance,” “Giving,” and “Getting Along”?
OUR AMBASSADORS
Bryan Miller
NEXUS Working Group Co-Chair for Family Prosperity
Bryan is a writer, teacher, podcaster, entrepreneur, philanthropist and spiritual coach. He created The School for Good Living, a coaching company dedicated to helping achievers live extraordinary lives of happiness, meaning and contribution. Bryan serves as a member of the board of directors and as executive director of culture for his family business, the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies. The Group owns more than sixty car dealerships and the NBA’s Utah Jazz.
Bryan has dedicated his life to the possibility of a world that works for everyone.
Whitney Webb
NEXUS Working Group Co-Chair for Family Prosperity
Whitney is the Director of Family Wealth Education at Cresset Capital and the founder of Launch Generation. She has been working with multi-generation families since 2012 in the areas of financial, philanthropic, and entrepreneurial education. Her background also includes a career on Wall Street and years working in microfinance in developing countries. Whitney is a board member of Youth Interactive which provides entrepreneurial and financial education for at-risk teens, and an advisor for the Ruth and Hal Launder’s Charitable Trust. Her mission is to help people from all walks of life best utilize their resources.
Bill Lyons
NEXUS Working Group Co-Chair for Family Prosperity
Bill is a senior director of Abbot Downing’s Institute for Family Culture, where he helps families clarify their vision and values, enhance family well-being, refine business objectives, and philanthropic endeavors. Bill also helps family and business leaders develop transition and legacy plans that include engaging the rising generation and other inheritors in the development of their financial and legal literacy as future wealth owners and beneficiaries.
Bill is a graduate of Boston College, Georgetown University Law Center, and has a masters in Family Studies from Loyola University of Chicago.
WORKING GROUP’S AREAS OF INTEREST
Operating Business: The opportunities and challenges associated with owning and operating a multi-generational family enterprise including governance and succession planning.
Shared Investments: When a liquidity event occurs, the opportunities and challenges associated with creating new investment vehicles that create growth and meaning.
Family Office: Best practices associated with the formation of a legal entity separate from the family enterprise focused on the business of the family rather than the family business.
Philanthropy: The establishment of philanthropy as an expression of personal and family values that provides an opportunity to enrich lives by increasing joy and decreasing suffering.
Trusted Advisors: Individuals or entities who by their behavior and professionalism provide experience, training, knowledge, and subject matter expertise to advise, guide, and direct.
TRANSFORMATIONAL RIPPLES
Everyone and everything is part of a greater whole. When we acknowledge and take responsibility for that, transformation inevitably occurs.
Self: Personal growth, learning, and development in order to become the best version of yourself
Family: Shared identity and stewardship to help the family grow, learn, and transform
Society: Impact and responsibility of family within the broader perspective of society
FAMILY PROSPERITY TRANSCENDS MONEY
Based on the work of James E. Hughes, Jr., Susan E. Massenzio, and Keith Whitaker from their book Complete Family Wealth
Complete Wealth comprises Five Capitals: human, intellectual, social, spiritual, and financial.
The HUMAN CAPITAL of a family consists of the individuals who make up the family. Their human capital includes their physical and emotional well-being as well as each member’s ability to find meaningful work, establish a positive sense of identity, and pursue his or her own happiness.
The INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL of a family is composed of the knowledge gained through the life experiences of each family member or what each family member knows. Signs of intellectual capital include family members’ academic successes, career growth, artistic achievement, and their ability to teach and learn from each other about what they know
SOCIAL CAPITAL refers to family members’ relationships with each other and with their communities. Some key indicators of social capital include the family’s ability to make thoughtful, shared decisions together; to welcome new members into itself; and to give of itself – in time, talent, and treasure – to the larger society of which it is a part.
SPIRITUAL CAPITAL is the family’s ability to create a shared intention or dream that transcends each member’s individual interests. This capital is not necessarily equivalent to a family’s religious belief or traditions, though such a tradition may express and nurture spiritual capital. Spiritual capital also includes humility and gratitude.
The FINANCIAL CAPITAL of a family is the property it owns. This property may included cash, public securities, privately held company stock, and interest in private partnerships. Financial capital is a great gift that contributes to a family’s ability to cultivate their other four forms of qualitative capital.
