Developing each for prosperity in all!
Family Enterprise Alliance, LLC
Developing each for prosperity in all!
Kim Schneider Malek
Founder/Consultant
Celebrating 25-years of dedicated service to
advancing family enterprise!
P: (303) 915-0242
E: kim@advancingfamilyenterprise.com
Family enterprise, that which courageously transforms and advances the innovation, initiative, and resourcefulness of a family into something that has sustainable, exchangeable, and collective value, is unique. Family enterprise is ownership and governance of family business. Family enterprise is family wealth management and family office. Family enterprise is philanthropy and family foundation. Family enterprise is family and family council. Family enterprise is a collective of individuals -- family members, shareholders, board members, executives, advisors, employees, suppliers, customers, and community beneficiaries.
Family enterprise is an intertwined system of family, ownership, governance, management, wealth, and social impact influences and decisions. What happens in one area affects the others. While many aspects of progress in family business and family enterprise growth and wealth generation are easily measured and controlled by numbers, true and lasting success happens when family and enterprise are in alliance, developing each for the prosperity in all.
Family enterprise alliance begins when enterprising and business-owning families cultivate an understanding and respect for the individuals who create family dynamics and the systemic nature of their relationship to each other, to ownership control, and enterprise management.
Family enterprise alliance proceeds when the owners' clearly articulate a plan reflecting the family's purpose, values, vision, mission, and goals. Family enterprise alliance regenerates when the governing body (typically a board) actively directs management according to that plan. Family enterprise alliance gains traction towards success when those active in leadership and decision making in the business entities responsibly create and implement strategies and structures that allow for available and accessible resources to be placed in service for the greatest chances of success.
The multi-generational continuity and succession planning journey includes navigating inevitable complexities that arise when family and enterprise strive for alliance. The journey demands attention, planning, and experiential collaborative learning. Some families experience the journey alone, hoping for the positive outcome they envision. Others partner with professional guides known as family business consultants or family enterprise advisors, to help them gain insight into the universe of possibilities for achieving their goals and to design and integrate plans around tailored proven practices.
Family Enterprise Alliance, LLC, a firm whose members have been exclusively focused in this area for over 25 years, is dedicated to systemically advancing all aspects of family business succession and family enterprise continuity towards their desired future story. We work collaboratively and strategically with those who affect and are affected by complex decisions and demanding allocation of resources to convert those decision into positive outcomes. Clients include ownership families, individual family members, family businesses, shareholders, boards, family councils, family offices, management teams, professional service providers, and peer and student learning groups.
Family Enterprise Alliance, LLC, provides custom consulting, family and team facilitation, personalized coaching, peer group learning, program and curriculum design, forums/retreats, and advisory team collaboration.
Kim Schneider Malek
Family Enterprise Advisor
Family Business Consultant
Facilitator
Educator
Founder of Family Enterprise Alliance, LLC, Kim Schneider Malek is the 2014 recipient of the Family Firm Institute’s Barbara Hollander Achievement Award for leadership and educational contribution to the field of family enterprise. Since 1997, Kim has primarily focused on advancing the alliance of family and enterprise through consulting, facilitation, teaching, and custom program and curriculum design and delivery. Practice areas include ownership and management succession planning, shareholder family education, governance and board development, next generation leadership development, and facilitation of interpersonal family communication, group dynamics, building intentional family business cultures, and planning retreats.
Kim has been an adjunct graduate-level professor and executive education guest lecturer for several professional associations and universities including, since 2001, the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business where she received the Diamond Award for Teaching Excellence and the University of Louisville College of Business. Course topics include high performance management, leadership, interpersonal and small group communication, family enterprise management and governance, and entrepreneurial family dynamics. She is a frequent speaker at family enterprise networks and family business centers including Family Office Exchange (FOX), Family Office Council, Institute for Family Business (UK), Family Enterprise Exchange (Canada), Business Enterprise Institute (US), YPO, Vistage, Entrepreneur's Organization Family Business Network, and Bailey Program for Family Enterprise.
A founding co-editor of the Family Firm Institute’s (FFI) Practitioner, an interdisciplinary online publication for family-enterprise advisors, Kim is recognized as an FFI Fellow and served on the faculty of FFI’s Global Education Network, the FFI Body of Knowledge Committee, and on the Research Applied Board of the Family Business Review. Kim has been a planning member of the “think tank” called Psychosocial Dynamics of Family and Business (PDFB) and is a an active steward of the a community of learning called Collaboration for Family Flourishing.
Kim holds an M.B.A. from University of Denver's Daniels College of Business and a B.S. in Communication from Boston University. She also holds professional practitioner certificates in marriage and family therapy, Family Business Advising, and Family Wealth Advising relative to family dynamics and governance.
Active in the field of distance learning for the past 35 years, Kim, a chief learning officer, has held a variety of positions and played instrumental roles in technology-based training, distance education program development, design, and delivery, and corporate and institutional university curriculum design and content development. She has been a frequent speaker and workshop presenter to constituents such as corporate HR and training professionals, educators, curriculum designers, military bases, and cable and technology executives. She transitioned industries following a three-month stint in Southeast Asia where she backpacked, taught English, and witnessed first-hand the economic, social, and community impact of family business.
A life member and past president of the board of the Allied Jewish Apartments (a low-income senior housing campus now called Kavod), Kim has served on several other local and national business, foundation, and non-profit boards and committees, including the Denver Jewish Day School, the Jewish Community Foundation of Colorado, the JFNA National Young Leadership Cabinet, and BBYO Youth Organization Parents' Council. A Denver “40-Under-40” leadership award recipient, Kim completed executive development programs including Leadership Denver and INFLUENCE.
A second-generation family enterprise advisor trained by her father, industry leader Frank S. Schneider, the 2009 recipient of the globally-recognized FFI Interdisciplinary Achievement Award, Kim lives in Denver, Colorado with her family business owning husband, teen daughter, twin sons, and giddy Golden Retrievers, Maggy McPickles and Scout Bubzy. She also remains connected with her medical foster son who was introduced to her by Dr. Rick Hodes, a 2007 CNN Hero of the Year finalist and the subject of both the award-winning HBO documentary Making the Crooked Straight by Susan Cohn Rockefeller (www.makingthecrookedstraight.org/) and This Is a Soul by Marilyn Berger, esteemed writer and communicator (www.thisisasoul.com).