Advisory consulting in corporate governance and family business.
Board advisory
The chairs and directors who call me already know, almost always, that something is not working in their board. The annual self-assessment came back fine and nobody believes it. The audit committee debates for hours without resolution. The CEO complains privately that the board is getting in places it should not. The controlling shareholder does not understand why the independents are so passive. The chair succession has been postponed for the sixth time. The signals differ, but the underlying diagnosis is usually the same: the invisible architectures of that room have fallen out of sync, and nobody is reading them.
What I do is not write a report on best practices — those circulate in abundance and rarely change anything. What I do is enter the room with the combination of three decades as an academic, advisor, and director; read the specific architectures of that board; give the chair and the committee an honest reading of what I saw; and accompany — when appropriate — the redesign that follows. The work runs through confidential interviews, direct observation of sessions, document review, and difficult conversations. It is slow and discreet. Cosmetic self-assessments end in a PowerPoint deck. This work ends in boards that see themselves more honestly and make different decisions as a result.
What I do
Engagements vary, but most fall into one of these seven lines. Each touches several of the architectures I describe in the About page.
Substantive board self-assessment. A six-to-eight-week process combining individual confidential interviews with each director, observation of at least one full session, review of packs and minutes from the last twelve months, and a report delivered first to the chair and then to the full board. Not the fourteen-question survey everyone signs before the cocktail reception. The conversation the board has not managed to have with itself, run by someone who is not competing for anyone’s seat.
Redesign of information architecture and agendas. What enters the room, what gets filtered, what arrives late. How much time is spent reviewing the past versus anticipating the future. Redesign of the board pack, of the annual cadence of topics, of where attention actually lands. It is also the space where the real use of AI in board work has the highest impact — a terrain in which I have direct practice, not paper opinions.
Committee and mandate redesign. Composition, scope, dynamics between committees, recurring friction between Audit and Risk or between Sustainability and Strategy. Which committees work, which exist only on paper, which should be created, which should be closed. Concrete work that changes how decisions are formed before they reach the full board.
Chair counsel. An ongoing relationship, usually one or two years, with the chair. Support in agenda design, in difficult conversations with the CEO or controlling shareholders, in chair succession itself, in calibrating the line between oversight and overreach. The least visible work and, in many cases, the one with the highest impact.
AI in board work. I use the system in my own boards and committees week to week. I know what works, what does not yet, where confidentiality risk lies, and where real upside lives. I design with chairs and boards how to incorporate AI into the board pack, session preparation, and information analysis, without falling into technological demonstrations that do not survive the second month.
Director succession and board renewal. Design of selection processes, definition of the profiles actually missing from the room (not those the nominations committee says are missing), conduct of the process with the family or the controller when applicable, and onboarding of new directors. I work alongside the search firm; I do not replace it.
Individual coaching for directors and chairs. A handful of cases per year, typically with newly appointed chairs, directors stepping into their first listed-company board, or executives transitioning into board service. Technical coaching, not soft-skills coaching.
How I work
Four principles apply across every engagement.
The first is absolute confidentiality. What is discussed with me does not appear in any case study, column, or keynote — not even anonymized, unless the client explicitly authorizes it years later. It is the condition without which this work is not possible.
The second is provider independence. I do not sell software, I do not sell director search, I do not sell courses on which I take commission. That allows me to recommend what actually serves the client, not what fills my backlog.
The third is delivery to the chair, not to the CEO. My formal client is the board or the chair. I maintain a relationship with the CEO because without it the work is impossible, but the structural loyalty sits in the right direction.
The fourth is a small annual cohort. I take between six and eight board engagements a year, no more. The reason is straightforward: this craft requires real presence, not delegation to a junior team with a template. If you reach out in a month where I do not have capacity, I will tell you and we will find a date that does.
What this is not
Three filter clarifications. I do not work with boards looking for a compliance seal to present to the regulator or the auditor — that is not what I do, and there are good firms that do. I do not work with shareholders or executives who want to use me as ammunition in an internal fight; I am an advisor to the board as a body, not an instrument of a faction. And I do not work where the chair is not prepared to receive feedback that will likely be uncomfortable — without that disposition the process becomes expensive theater, and I would rather decline than participate.
Cases
Three anonymized vignettes, all cleared for general mention.
Chilean controlled industrial group, fourth generation, sales over US$ 500 million. The controlling shareholder felt the board had become a formality and the independents decorative. Six-week process, interviews with all nine directors, observation of two sessions. The report identified three problems: the agenda devoted 70% of time to operational oversight and almost nothing to strategy; the two critical committees shared five of six members and duplicated discussions; and the board pack arrived 36 hours before each session with 400 pages. Full redesign of annual agenda, separation of committees with distinct composition, new pack format with executive summary built by chair counsel. Board time down 40% within six months, and the controller returned personal time to sessions.
Peruvian family business, second generation, founder-to-external-CEO transition under way. The process had stalled twice over two years. Six-month combined engagement with the board chair and the family council: redesign of the search process; renewed CEO profile based on what was actually missing in the business (rather than what the founder imagined was missing); design of the first hundred days with an explicit boundary between board and CEO; and accompaniment through the first nine months post-arrival. The new CEO has now been in the seat for three years.
IPSA-listed financial-sector company, post-reputational event the audit committee had approved without observations. Focused self-assessment of the committee, not the full board, run under reinforced confidentiality. The report identified that the committee was operating with critical information asymmetry vis-à-vis management, and that the chair rotation of the committee had been postponed for eight years. Change of committee chair, new composition, new pack, new relationship with internal and external audit. Verifiable result in the next regulatory examination.
How to start
Almost every engagement starts with a one-hour conversation at no cost, usually with the chair of the board, in which I understand the context and, if it makes sense, propose a scope and a plan. If the match is right, we discuss fees and timing; if it is not, I tell you who should do that work instead. I do not charge for that first conversation.
Family enterprise advisory
Family enterprises do not die from markets. They die from conversations they never had. The succession postponed five years longer than reasonable. The conversation with the child who wanted in and was not ready, or with the one who was ready and nobody dared to call. The conflict between cousin-shareholders that calcified because signing a protocol was easier than addressing it. The decision on whether to sell the company that the patriarch took alone, because asking would have meant ceding power.
The statistic is well known: roughly 30% of family enterprises survive to the second generation, 12% to the third, 3% to the fourth. What the statistic does not say is why. The reason is rarely strategic or financial. It is governance. It is the inability of the family and the enterprise to design the conversations each stage of the family life-cycle demands, before the cost of not having them becomes irreversible.
My work with family enterprises is not about writing constitutions that end up in a drawer. It is also not about facilitating weekends at a country house where everyone hugs and nothing changes. It is about helping business families read the particular architectures that coexist in their case — that of actual power across branches, of the boundary between family and enterprise, of the succession ahead, of the accumulated emotional patrimony, of the rituals that hold cohesion — and design the spaces and conversations the next stage requires.
What I do
Seven lines cover most engagements with business families. Each touches several architectures, and they rarely appear alone: a well-handled generational succession forces redesign of family governance, corporate governance, and sometimes the family office as well.
Family governance design. Family council, family shareholder assembly, protocol or constitution where appropriate. The distinction from common practice: the document is the result, not the goal. What matters is having had the conversations the document structures — on family employment criteria, on liquidity, on voting, on spouses, on the next generation. Without those conversations, the protocol is signed and lasts five years of good intentions; with them, the document becomes a living governance instrument.
Founder-to-external-CEO succession. The hardest step a founder takes. It typically fails for two complementary reasons: the founder does not let go at the required pace, and the incoming CEO cannot exercise the role without feeling like “the owner’s employee.” I work with both sides from before the search, during the selection process, and especially through the first twelve to eighteen months — where almost everything is decided. I define with the board and the family the founder’s formal spaces after the transition — board seat, chair, advisor, shareholder assembly member — because “you are no longer in operations” without explicit design is an invitation to return through the back window.
Generational succession. Different from the previous line. It is the redesign of the family’s role in the enterprise when an entire generation begins to transfer power to the next. It does not happen in an event. It takes years. It includes next-gen formation, the design of their entry into governance (family council, board, committees), the redefinition of the outgoing generation’s role, and the uncomfortable conversation about which children and grandchildren actually have the vocation and capacity for active ownership versus passive ownership.
Family board professionalization. Incorporation of independent directors, separation of roles between controlling family and board, definition of which decisions remain with shareholders and which are delegated to the board, committee redesign. It is a process of power-ceding by the family that is often harder emotionally than technically. My role is to make that process safe enough that it actually happens.
Family office governance. When the family has an investment vehicle separate from the operating company, the family office requires its own governance architecture — distinct from the operating company’s and often not explicitly designed. Investment committee, risk mandate, relationship with external advisors, information policy to the family, handling of generations not active in the operating business but shareholders of the family office. I speak this language from the inside: I run one.
Prevention of shareholder conflict. Preventive work with families where early tensions are surfacing — between branches, between generations, between active shareholders in the business and passive ones. The work aims to open conversations before they calcify, design resolution mechanisms, and, when appropriate, facilitate exit agreements or shareholder reorganization. This is not mediation of active conflict; it is governance construction so the conflict does not turn active.
Next-generation programs. Individual or cohort programs with next-gen members preparing to take on ownership, board, or executive roles. Focus on governance, on reading boards from the inside, on responsible use of shareholder power, on the psychological transition from “the owner’s child” to “adult shareholder.” Small, selective cohorts.
How I work
The same four principles as in board advisory, with two specific nuances for this world.
Absolute confidentiality — even more so here, because family information is more sensitive than corporate information. Provider independence — I do not sell search, I do not sell family office software, I have no commercial agreements with private banks or law firms. Small annual cohort — four to six family engagements per year, because this work requires presence at moments that cannot be scheduled.
Two nuances. First: I work with the family as the client, not with an individual member. If one branch hires me thinking I will represent its interests against another, I decline. My formal client is always the family body — the patriarch, the founding couple, the family council, or whoever governs — but never a faction within it. Second: in family enterprises I work more slowly. Processes take months or years, not weeks. Families expecting strategic-consultant speed are not good clients for this work, and I usually say so in the first conversation.
What this is not
Three clarifications. I am not a mediator in active family conflict. If there are three years of accumulated dispute on the table, an ongoing lawsuit between siblings or branches, or an unresolved marital breakdown with shareholder implications, you need a different professional first — a family lawyer, a certified mediator, a family therapist. My work is preventive governance and cold redesign; hot conflict requires other hands.
I do not work where the patriarch or matriarch says they want change but in private is not willing to let go of any power. I discover this in the first two meetings and, when it is clear, I say so. Continuing would mean charging for a process that will not go anywhere.
And I do not work with families systematically excluding the next generation from the process because “they are not ready.” At that age, most people in the room were not ready either. The real question is whether they are being prepared or being written off.
Cases
Three anonymized vignettes.
Mexican family enterprise, second generation, sales over US$ 300 million in manufacturing. Five sibling shareholders, two active in the business in executive roles, three passive. The latent conflict: the actives felt they deserved more for working; the passives felt the actives used the company as a personal vehicle. The founder, widow and board chair, tried to sustain unity through breakfasts. Fourteen-month engagement. Redesign of family governance: clean separation between executive roles paid at market, shareholders with a defined dividend policy, and family council with rotating presidency across the five branches. Three independent directors joined the board. Four years later, the five siblings remain shareholders, the company grew 40%, and the monthly breakfast continues — but it is just breakfast now.
Peruvian family enterprise, first to second generation, 71-year-old founder who had spent eight years “preparing” his succession with nothing actually happening. Three children, two in the business. Eighteen-month engagement combining work with the founder, the board, the family, and an external CEO search process. Explicit design of the founder’s post-transition role: board chair with a defined agenda, operationally vetoed, custodian of long-term purpose and of the relationship with historical stakeholders. The eldest son, who for years had assumed himself the natural successor, became vice-chair with a transition role and eventual succession to chair. External CEO in the seat two years later; the company doubled in value over four years.
Colombian family office, third generation, patrimony fragmented across four branches with growing tensions on investment strategy and liquidity. Twenty-month engagement. Complete redesign of family office governance: professionalized investment committee with two external members, predictable dividend policy, orderly exit mechanism for branches choosing not to remain under the common vehicle, and clean separation between family philanthropy and the investment vehicle. One of the four branches opted for orderly exit with an independent valuation. The other three remain in the vehicle and report better relations than they have had in a decade.
How to start
As with board engagements, most family engagements begin with a one-hour conversation at no cost, usually with the patriarch, matriarch, board chair, or family council chair, depending on who is reaching out. It is a conversation to understand the situation, identify what is actually at stake, and propose — if it makes sense — a scope and timing. In this kind of work, the first meeting almost always reveals that the urgent matter that prompted the call is not the important matter to solve. That is also part of the craft.
Keynotes and speaking
The best events do not end with applause. They end with the executive committee still discussing what they heard at breakfast on Monday. What I do on stage — conferences, strategic offsites, director gatherings, executive programs — is not entertainment and it is not motivation. It is delivering to that audience three or four uncomfortable ideas, supported by data and real cases, that force them to look at what they already thought they understood in a different way. I leave the room when the silence before the questions lasts longer than the questions themselves.
[Reel — 60-to-90-second video with cuts from three keynotes in Spanish and English]
Topics
Six topics I currently deliver in various formats. Each keynote is adjusted to the event’s context, audience, and language. I work with the organizer to define the most useful angle; I do not read templates.
The boardroom self-assessment charade. Why 87% of directors rate their boards above average, what the evidence actually says about what improves a board, and what a self-assessment that works actually looks like. For audiences of directors, board chairs, corporate secretaries, and regulators.
Why boards fail: it is not talent, it is architecture. The umbrella keynote. Dismantles the idea that better talent equals better boards and shows how the invisible architectures of the room — actual power, information, deliberation, committees, the boundary with management — explain almost every major contemporary corporate failure. For mixed C-level and board audiences.
Boards in the age of AI: what changes, what does not, and what few are seeing. Based on direct practice using AI in my own boards and committees. What genuinely changes the director’s work, where the confidentiality risks lie, what to do this week and what to leave for next year. No tech demos; concrete cases. For audiences of directors, chairs, family offices, and executive committees.
When consensus destroys value. Why the most harmonious boards often make the worst decisions, what the evidence says about productive dissent, and how a chair designs a room that can disagree without breaking. Provocative and especially useful for newly appointed chairs, executive teams that are too cohesive, or boards coming out of uniformly positive evaluations.
Successions planned years before, not weeks after. Why most successions — of CEO, of chair, of family generation — fail, the four recurring errors that explain the pattern, and how to design a transition that actually works. For family enterprise audiences, family offices, founders, and board chairs.
Governing companies with a controlling shareholder: the Latin American paradox. Why the corporate governance model imported from the Anglo-Saxon world works poorly in a region where more than 60% of companies have concentrated ownership, and how to design effective boards in the presence of an active controller. The topic almost nobody in the global literature handles well and the one that matters most in our region. For regional audiences, family enterprises, active controllers, and international institutions operating in Latin America.
Formats
I adapt delivery to the event. The usual formats are four.
Short keynote — forty-five to sixty minutes, no Q&A. Ideal for conference opening or closing. Extended keynote — seventy-five to ninety minutes, including substantive audience Q&A. The format I recommend most often: the conversation with the audience is where the questions that actually change something tend to emerge. Interactive workshop — half a day or full day, for audiences of twenty to sixty participants. Boardroom work in workshop format, with real cases and group discussion. Panel moderation or fireside chat — more conversational format, especially useful for executive programs or director gatherings.
Languages, audiences, and geographies
I deliver in Spanish, English, and, in a more limited format, Portuguese. I have presented for audiences in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. The audiences my work serves best are: sitting directors, board chairs, audit committees and other specialized committees, CEOs and executive committees, business families and family councils, academic directors of governance programs, family offices, and regulatory institutions.
Logistics
Fees available on request, defined by geography, format, language, and total time involved — including preparation work with the organizer, which in many cases weighs as much as stage time. I travel internationally; for events outside Chile, travel costs are agreed separately. Technical requirements are standard: lavalier or handheld microphone, HDMI projection, ideally a monitor return. I work with my own digital presentations; organizers receive the final deck one week before the event. For confidential or NDA-covered events, I adjust format and examples accordingly.
What organizers say
[Placeholder testimonial 1 — Director conference organizer]
[Placeholder testimonial 2 — Dean or executive education program director at a business school]
[Placeholder testimonial 3 — Head of corporate affairs or talent director at a company that brought me to a strategic offsite]
[Placeholder testimonial 4 — Board chair or family council chair who brought me to an internal session]
How to book
The typical process is straightforward. The organizer sends a short note with three data points: event date and location, expected audience (size and profile), and desired format. I reply within seventy-two hours with availability, fees, and a proposed angle most useful for what was described. If we move forward, we hold one or two calibration meetings before the event, in which I adjust content, cases, and specific references for that audience. The organizational friction is handled by my team: contracts, invoicing, travel logistics, and materials are on our side.