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Program Experience
Highlights and Key Outcomes
In Wharton Family Office Program: Balancing Family Harmony and Financial Prosperity, you will:
- Learn about family wealth management in the context of a family office
- Learn how to sustain family harmony across generations and branches of the family
- Learn how to own and manage the family’s financial assets while considering family members’ unique needs and circumstances
- Discover ways to substantially enhance the governance, management, operations, and performance of your family office
- Find out how a family office can optimally balance multiple generations’ differing investment horizons, risk thresholds, and liquidity needs
- Explore how family members can proactively address potential conflicts and effectively communicate with one another
- Interact with world-class experts in family wealth management at the school renowned for its reputation in finance
- Benefit from sharing knowledge and experiences with other ultra-high-net-worth families attending the program
Experience & Impact
Family office management is a much broader and more complex area than conventional investing. It is critical to make sure your advisor is taking a holistic approach to managing your wealth. Wharton Family Office Program helps you see the big picture while drilling down into the practical issues that will determine the success and security of your family over generations.
This program will boost your knowledge and understanding of key issues in family office wealth management, governance, management, and operations. Participants will explore everything from investment management and estate planning to family interpersonal communications, succession planning, governance, engaging the next generation, and family technology and operations.
You will learn to recognize the ways in which a family office must balance the differential needs and concerns of multi-generational, multi-branch families. Investigate how family members at diverse stages of life may vary in their risk tolerance, investment horizon, and liquidity needs, and how those differences are addressed by family offices in ways that preserve and enhance the family’s wealth while maintaining family unity.
The classroom experience of this program includes breakout sessions, interactive exercises, real-life case studies, talks by prominent guest speakers, receptions, and opportunities to engage with program participants and guest speakers.
Session topics include:
- The Family Wealth Management Process: Balancing Family Harmony with Financial Prosperity
- Global Geopolitical and Economic Outlook: Implications for Capital Markets
- Enabling Family Harmony through Effective Communication
- Managing Difficult Conversations
- Modern Portfolio Theory and Performance Measurement
- Private Equity, Private Credit, and Venture Capital
- Asset Allocation and Portfolio Construction in the Family Office Context
- Hedge Funds and Other Alternative Assets
- Real Estate Investments
- Foundations of Family Enterprise Governance
- Family Philanthropy and Legacy
- Asset Ownership Structures: Trusts in Common Law Countries
- Intergenerational Wealth Transfer
- Preparing the Next Generation for Leadership Roles
- Best Practices in Family Office Management: Nuts and Bolts of Family Office Operations
- Sustaining Family Harmony and Unity: Shared Values, Vision, and Mission
Due to our application review period, applications submitted after 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday for programs beginning the following Monday may not be processed in time to grant admission. Applicants will be contacted by a member of our Client Relations Team to discuss options for future programs and dates.
Who Should Attend
Wharton Family Office Program: Balancing Family Harmony and Financial Prosperity is designed for global ultra-high-net-worth (net worth of at least $30 million) family members and individuals who:
- Are considering the formation of a professionally run family office
- Currently have an office and wish to learn more as well as optimize their operations
- Are considering joining a multi-family office
- Have recently experienced, or are anticipating, a substantial liquidity event such as the sale of a business
While the program is intended for Family Office principals, their closest advisors will be considered for admission as well.
Fluency in English, written and spoken, is required for participation in Wharton Executive Education programs unless otherwise indicated.

Plan Your Stay
This program is held at the Steinberg Conference Center located on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. Meals and accommodations are included in the program fees. Learn more about planning your stay at Wharton’s Philadelphia campus.
Group Enrollment
To further leverage the value and impact of this program, we encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to Wharton. We offer group-enrollment benefits to companies sending four or more participants.
Faculty

Raphael Amit, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Co-Academic Director
Marie and Joseph Melone Professor; Professor of Management, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, family business, venture-capital financing

Bilge Yilmaz, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Co-Academic Director
Wharton Private Equity Professor; Professor of Finance; Academic Director, Harris Family Alternative Investments Program, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Corporate finance, alternative investments, game theory, political economy

Christopher Geczy, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Adjunct Professor of Finance; Academic Director, Wharton Wealth Management Initiative; Academic Director, Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research, The Wharton School

Joseph Gyourko, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Martin Bucksbaum Professor; Professor of Real Estate; Professor of Finance; Professor of Business Economics & Public Policy; Nancy A. Nasher and David Haemisegger Director of the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Housing markets, real estate finance, and real estate economics

A. Craig MacKinlay, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Joseph P. Wargrove Professor of Finance, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Asset pricing models, behavior of futures prices, econometric modeling, stock market behavior

Katherina Rosqueta, MBASee Faculty Bio
Founding Executive Director, Center for High Impact Philanthropy

Nancy Rothbard, PhDSee Faculty Bio
Deputy Dean; David Pottruck Professor; Professor of Management, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Emotion and identity, work motivation and engagement, work-life and career development