Team

Assistant Director of Student Engagement
chesney_maniaci@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Outreach Program Assistant
elizabeth_rieker@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Director
lauren_willets@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Program Director
joy_purvis@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Professor of the Practice
peter_begalla@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Cooper Biersach is the co-founder of the Family Enterprise Center at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and Professor of Practice in Organizational Behavior. She teaches undergraduates and MBA students, facilitates peer groups and delivers educational programming to multi-generational families. Since 2009, Biersach has worked with over 1,500 next generation leaders and their families. Drawing on her experience as a non-family executive, she provides leadership coaching, succession planning, governance and communication consulting to privately-held businesses and family enterprises.

Biersach served on the executive committee for a family-owned company, Jack Morton Worldwide, a global brand experience and communications agency. In her human resources leadership role, she faced many of the challenges and opportunities of a family-run business including exponential growth, succession planning, leadership development, acquisitions, global pressures and the transition of the business by sale to a publicly traded holding company (Interpublic Group). Biersach is the founding director of the Carolinas Family Office Forum, a networking and educational peer group for top executives of family offices in North and South Carolina.

Biersach received her BA in English at UNC-Chapel Hill, followed by her MBA and JD with honors. She holds an executive certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University and is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation.

cooper_biersach@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Josh Gentine is an advisor to enterprising families with operating companies and family offices. His work focuses on helping family owners navigate succession planning, establish alignment for the future direction of their enterprise, address conflict and prepare the next generation of family leaders. Gentine sits on the board of directors at his family’s company, Sargento Foods Inc., as well as a family-owned ESOP auto dealership group. Additionally, he runs Bench Family Forums, round table groups for family executives in middle-market and large cap family-run companies and recently launched Family Inc., a platform for connecting families-in-business.

Prior to starting Bench, Gentine served as a manager at Deloitte Consulting where he focused on mergers and acquisitions as well as helping lead the design of Deloitte Consulting’s global talent operating model.

Gentine earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He returned to Notre Dame following his MBA to study philosophy and theology in the seminary with the intent of becoming a Catholic priest. Gentine is accredited as a Hogan-Certified, Gallup-Certified and ICF Certified coach. He and his wife, Meredith, have two young children, Henry and Juliette, and live in Charlottesville, VA.

joshua_gentine@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Chris Maslin is the founder and president of MAP (Maslin Advisory Partners), a consulting practice focused on family business flourishing, rising generation development and purposeful planning. He has deep experience with family business after nearly two decades in leadership with The Biltmore Company, a fifth-generation family-owned enterprise, where he serves as vice president of HR & Organizational Development. In this role, Maslin has led initiatives in succession planning, leadership development and organizational design. As an objective, non-family executive, he has helped guide generational transitions from G4 to G5, align family and business goals and strengthen culture. Under his leadership, Biltmore has sustained turnover rates less than half the industry average for more than a decade and earned recognition as a “Best and Brightest Company to Work For” three years in a row.

Maslin is a certified executive coach who has advised a myriad of businesses from mid-sized family enterprises to Fortune 500 companies. He also serves as a guest lecturer with the Family Enterprise Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. Beyond his professional work, Maslin serves on nonprofit boards and enjoys exploring the mountains of North Carolina with his family.

Steve Miller is the co-founder of the Family Enterprise Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. His research focuses on next-generation leadership development in family-owned enterprises. Miller works with family businesses and his students to help them develop world-class, sustainable enterprises. His approach to family business leadership is to create and use business and governance strategies that align business, family and ownership goals. He draws on his 34 years of experience as the top non-family executive of the Vanderbilt/Cecil family-owned Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., where he played a key role in making Biltmore the most visited historic home in the United States, with over 1 million visitors each year. Miller is president of GenSpan Inc., a consulting firm based in Asheville. He chairs the board of Draper & Kramer, a fourth-generation family-owned real estate development and management firm in Chicago.

steve_miller@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Amelia Renkert-Thomas is the founder of Renkert Thomas Consulting LLC, the author of “Engaged Ownership: A Guide for Owners of Family Businesses” (Wiley, 2015), and Professor of the Practice at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches Family Business Ownership and Governance.

Renkert Thomas Consulting LLC works with family enterprise owners on issues related to strategy, ownership and governance. Renkert-Thomas brings to her work multi-disciplinary training and extensive experience in governance design; business operations and strategy; estate planning; and family systems and organizational development.

A tax, trusts and estates attorney by training, she was a partner at the international law firm Withers Bergman LLP, where she co-chaired the firm’s Family Office Group, before launching her consulting practice in 2010.

Renkert-Thomas comes from multi-generational businesses on both sides of her family. She succeeded her father and served as president of Ironrock Inc.—a fifth-generation family-owned and managed producer of ceramic tile and thin brick located in Canton, Ohio—from 1990 to 2002. She remains closely involved with Ironrock as a director and officer. Her maternal grandfather founded Fisher-Price Toys.

Renkert-Thomas is member of the faculty of the Ultra High Net Worth Institute and chairs the Leadership and Transition Planning Domain. She is a member of the board of directors of Western Reserve Trust Company. She lives in Durham, North Carolina and received a BA from Yale College, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an LL.M in Taxation from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

amelia_renkert_thomas@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Emeritus Board Member

Family Business Leader in Residence

Emeritus Board Member

Cooper Biersach is the co-founder of the Family Enterprise Center at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and Professor of Practice in Organizational Behavior. She teaches undergraduates and MBA students, facilitates peer groups and delivers educational programming to multi-generational families. Since 2009, Biersach has worked with over 1,500 next generation leaders and their families. Drawing on her experience as a non-family executive, she provides leadership coaching, succession planning, governance and communication consulting to privately-held businesses and family enterprises.

Biersach served on the executive committee for a family-owned company, Jack Morton Worldwide, a global brand experience and communications agency. In her human resources leadership role, she faced many of the challenges and opportunities of a family-run business including exponential growth, succession planning, leadership development, acquisitions, global pressures and the transition of the business by sale to a publicly traded holding company (Interpublic Group). Biersach is the founding director of the Carolinas Family Office Forum, a networking and educational peer group for top executives of family offices in North and South Carolina.

Biersach received her BA in English at UNC-Chapel Hill, followed by her MBA and JD with honors. She holds an executive certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University and is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation.

cooper_biersach@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Advisory Board Member

Advisory Board Member

Steve Miller is the co-founder of the Family Enterprise Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. His research focuses on next-generation leadership development in family-owned enterprises. Miller works with family businesses and his students to help them develop world-class, sustainable enterprises. His approach to family business leadership is to create and use business and governance strategies that align business, family and ownership goals. He draws on his 34 years of experience as the top non-family executive of the Vanderbilt/Cecil family-owned Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., where he played a key role in making Biltmore the most visited historic home in the United States, with over 1 million visitors each year. Miller is president of GenSpan Inc., a consulting firm based in Asheville. He chairs the board of Draper & Kramer, a fourth-generation family-owned real estate development and management firm in Chicago.

steve_miller@kenan-flagler.unc.edu

Advisory Board Member

Advisory Board Member

Advisory Board Member

Advisory Board Member