Leadership
Raphael (Raffi) Amit, PhD
Chairman, Wharton GFA Executive Committee
Raphael (“Raffi”) Amit is the Marie and Joseph Melone Professor and a Professor of Management at the Wharton School. Dr. Amit founded and leads the Wharton Global Family Alliance (WGFA), a unique academic-family business partnership established to enhance the marketplace advantage and the social wealth creation contributions of enterprising families through thought leadership, knowledge transfers and the sharing of ideas and best practices among influential global families. He has served as the Academic Director with overall responsibility for Wharton Entrepreneurship which encompasses all of Wharton’s entrepreneurial programs between 1999 and 2015.
Dr. Amit holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics, and received his Ph.D. in Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Dr. Amit’s current research and teaching interests center on family business management, governance, and finance, on Family wealth management, on venture capital and private equity investments, on entrepreneurship, on the design of innovative business models and on business strategy. He has published extensively in leading academic journals and is frequently quoted in a broad range of practitioner outlets.
Dr. Amit’s award winning research on family firms, which centers on issues that relate to ownership, management, control and governance of family businesses, on wealth management, and on family offices is widely cited. He has been working with substantial families around the world on such issues as creating governance systems for families and their businesses, succession, valuation, wealth management, the formation of a family office, and more. Overall, the work of Dr. Amit with families integrates the behavioral and emotional issues that characterize the life of each family, with the economic and financial issues that must be addressed to sustain family harmony and happiness alongside with the long-term prosperity of the family enterprises.
Professor Amit has held a range of management and Board of Directors positions in various companies. He served as Chair of the Board of Directors of Creo Products Inc. for 6 years. (NASDAQ: CREO until May 2005 when it was acquired by Kodak.) Professor Amit has helped form the Korean Global IT Fund, a $100 million VC fund and has served as the first Chairman of the KGIF Advisory Board. He has served on the Board of Directors of Alvarion Ltd. a wireless communication equipment company, and has been a member of the Audit and Compensation Committees of Alvarion. He has also served as the only external director of a private family owned and controlled firm in Hong Kong. Dr. Amit currently serves on the Board of Directors of a global family controlled firm and advises numerous private and publicly held family controlled businesses, on a broad range of strategic, governance and financial issues.
Profile: https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/amit/
Email: amit@wharton.upenn.edu
Laird Pitcairn Pendleton, MBA
Chairman, Wharton GFA Advisory Board
Mr. Pendleton is the co-founder and former Principal of the Cairnwood Cooperative Corporation, a single family office that has managed the affairs of the Pitcairn family since 1987. In 1994, along with Barney Corning, Mr. Pendleton founded and leads the CCC Alliance, a consortium of wealthy families, which is the largest private network of single family offices in the U.S. He has also been active in the family’s global venture capital activities. Mr. Pendleton serves on various corporate and charitable boards and is the former President of The Glencairn Foundation, the family’s charitable giving arm. He is a graduate of Lehigh University and the Babson Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sorenson Merit Scholar.
CONTACT US
General Inquiries
Nadia Kiyatkina
Associate Director
Wharton Global Family Alliance