Educating the Rising Generation

Brian Hooks is chairman and CEO of Stand Together, a philanthropic community that works with more than 700 business leaders and philanthropists to empower people to realize their unique potential and help every person rise.  Stand Together’s comprehensive approach to addressing the country’s biggest challenges includes support for more than 1,000 professors at over 300 universities, tens of thousands of K-12 teachers, more than 200 community-based organizations addressing persistent poverty, and millions of grassroots activists working to improve public policy. 
 
Brian is also president of the Charles Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute. Previously, he served as executive director and COO of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he led strategy and operations for a growing research, education, and public policy center. He is co-author with Charles Koch of the book, Believe in People: Bottom Up Solutions for a Top Down World , a national bestseller published in November 2020 . Brian was named to the 2021 TIME100 Next list, featuring leaders who are shaping the future of their fields. Brian serves on the boards of the Mercatus Center, Institute for Humane Studies, and Reason Foundation. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife and daughter.

Lauren Cohen is the L.E. Simmons Professor in the Finance & Entrepreneurial Management Units at Harvard Business School and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is an Editor of the Review of Financial Studies, along with being a past Editor of Management Science, and serving on the editorial board of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

Professor Cohen teaches in the MBA Program, Executive Education Program, Doctoral Program, and Special Custom Programs at the Harvard Business School. He is the Faculty Co-Chair and Designer of the HarvardX Fintech course, and the Faculty Co-Chair and Designer of the HBS Executive Education course Building a Legacy: Family Office Wealth Management.

His award-winning research has been published in the top journals in Finance and Economics. It is also frequently profiled in various media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, and Forbes. It has been recognized by numerous National Science Foundation (NSF) Awards, including a National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for his research agenda on Relationships in Finance. He was named a 2008 Pensions & Investments “Cutting Edge Academic,” a Top 40 Under 40 Business School Professor in 2017 by Poets & Quants, and a top teacher at Harvard by CNBC.

Dr. Cohen frequently advises government organizations in the US and abroad, including the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, United States Patent & Trademark Office, testifying before the United States Congress, and advising governments throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia on matters of innovation, ESG, FinTech, government spending, and family offices.

Through his applied work, Dr. Cohen has consulted with top hedge funds in the industry, and has been awarded numerous practitioner research prizes. He has also appeared as an expert witness in high profile innovation-, insider trading-, and investment-related litigation cases, including those involving trillion dollar asset management firms.

Dr. Cohen received a PhD in finance and an MBA from the University of Chicago in 2005. He earned dual undergraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania - a BSE from the Wharton School and a BA in economics from the College of Arts & Sciences in 2001. He has also served on the Advisory Boards of Oppenheimer Funds (acquired by Invesco Investment Management Ltd.), Cake Financial (acquired by E*Trade) and Quadriserv, Inc. (acquired by EquiLend Holdings - an industry consortium comprised of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, UBS, JPMorgan, Northern Trust, Blackrock and State Street).

Professor Cohen currently resides in Belmont, MA with his wife - Dr. Nicole Cohen - and their six children. In his spare time, Professor Cohen is a competitive powerlifter and strongman.

David Werdiger has a rare mix of skills and experience. Based in Melbourne Australia, David works with high net worth families and their businesses with a focus on succession planning, family/business shared vision and governance, managing family conflict, and general strategic advice. David’s diverse background gives him a powerful mix of skills: second generation family member, tech entrepreneur, Adjunct Professor, best-selling author on wealth transition and a dynamic conference speaker and educator.

David is second generation of a Jewish immigrant family which successfully built a large textile manufacturing business, and then moved into commercial real estate. David took his own path as a software developer, quant analyst, and then technology entrepreneur, starting several businesses. Over the past ten years, he has taken a shift into the next stage of his professional life.

He is director of Nathanson Pearson in Melbourne Australia – single family office and established provider of practical and appropriate solutions specifically for high net worth families. As a published best-selling author of Transition he has assisted many HNW families to navigate the complexities of succession planning, intergenerational wealth transition, and family governance.

David’s extensive commercial experience together with a confidential and empathetic relational approach to the challenges of family related business issues, has allowed him to facilitate unique solutions for clients by tapping into his personal knowledge and highly resourceful professional and specialist advisor network.

Carefully packaged and staged projects provide clients with a re-assuring process consulting that has successfully helped business owners establish a better work/life balance, retire, sell, hand-over to the next generation or manage family conflict.

David is also an Adjunct Professor (family governance, entrepreneurship) at Swinburne University, publishes regularly, and is regular speaker at HNW conferences and events around the world. He presents case studies and is able to distil complex issues and present them simply and succinctly.

A sampling of typical engagements include:

• Non-exec director for family boards and family councils, family strategic advisor
• Helping a business manage conflict between family members, align personal and business vision, and establish better communication and good governance
• Working with a family on policies to help foster entrepreneurship in the rising generation and prepare them to be effective custodians of the family assets
• Succession planning – preparing both the incumbent and rising generation for a handover of operational control and appropriate governance of the family business to make the business sustainable and maintain family harmony

David is married with five children and deeply engaged with his local community through a number of non-profits. He’s writing his second book – about the challenges of the modern always-connected digital world. In between all that, he is passionate about sport – particularly AFL, cricket and NFL.

Caleb is the Joshua Green Corporation Family Council Chairman and oversees the relationship between the shareholders and the JGC Board of Directors. The Joshua Green Corporation is a six-generation family firm in the Pacific Northwest.  Caleb has been instrumental in the process and curation of helping multigenerational family offices understand the importance of adopting technology to promote and develop cohesive relationships and education initiatives around financial literacy and leadership. Caleb is a Managing Partner of Tannehill Capital Partners and currently resides in Dallas-Fort Worth with his wife Alexa and son Tillman.