Meet the Koch Center’s inaugural set of Family Enterprise Scholars

Peter Boumgarten contributed this post to the Olin Blog. He is the Koch Family Professor of Practice in Family Enterprise and director of the Koch Center for Family Enterprise.

This summer, Bart Hamilton and I have an opportunity to work with the Koch Center for Family Enterprise’s inaugural set of Family Enterprise Scholars. The five students and their respective projects are listed below. If you have relevant insight and expertise in any of these areas, do reach out, as we would love to put you in touch with these scholars!

The group is paid to work on research tied to family enterprise. They will learn about a huge swath of the US economy—closely held businesses—and bring some rigor to a space often missed in our research work. We hope that the program creates opportunities to signal expertise generated by working on a big problem in partnership with a faculty member.

Michael Roytburd

Michael Roytburd, MBA 2024, is working with me and Mark Hand (University of Texas, Arlington) on a project to better understand owner motivations at times of transition. This project will ultimately create a community-facing tool to help owners better understand what they are trying to optimize for when facing any kind of succession (management, ownership, or control) and how the options in front of them (family succession, ESOP, sale, etc.) map onto these drivers.

Vincent Nguyen

Vincent Nguyen, MBA 2023, will return to WashU to finish his MD on the other side of Forest Park from Olin. Before he does this, he’s working to help segment different strategies within the private equity space and using this segmentation to discern what does and does not create value in healthcare roll-ups.

Paige Copenhaver

Paige Copenhaver is a rising second year at Haverford College studying mathematical economics and German. She’s working closely with Hamilton and me to understand what leads to a higher likelihood of success for previous start-ups out of St. Louis’ ArchGrants incubator. One factor that comes to mind is ownership of the founding team (e.g., husband and wife, brothers, outside family and friend investors) and how that interacts with the support they receive.

Claire Dempsey

Claire Dempsey, MBA/MSW 2023, is working with me and recent Olin alum Margaret Margaret Schnuck Rogers, MBA 2023, on a new program in partnership with the Chancellor’s office called Philanthropy-forward. She’s working on mapping the different schools of thought in philanthropy as the Koch Center team creates a model to help individual and family philanthropies be more strategic in giving.

Jessica Timerman

Jessica Timerman, MSW/MBA 2024, is working with the center on two projects. She is supporting the development of the Olin-wide case competition called “Values and Data from the Owner’s Box.” The case focuses on the Taylor family and their attempt in an MLS franchise to balance financial and non-financial ownership objectives. This case competition will run later this year and be open to undergrad and grad teams nationwide. She’s also helping develop a survey to better understand the behavior of family offices, a significant and growing part of the financial market.

Pictured from top left clockwise: Paige Copenhaver, Claire Dempsey, Vincent Nguyen, Michael Roytburd and Jessica Timerman.