Joe, former chair and a founder of Generation6 (a family business consulting firm), comes from a family that has owned or led many family businesses including Meindersma, a Dutch pharmaceutical company sold to AKZO Nobel, and the world’s third largest shipping company in the 1970s, NYSE listed Seatrain Lines, which ceased operation in the 1980s following the death of the patriarch, sending the family into chaos, and the company into a death spiral.

Joe is a scholar as much as he is a practitioner: He is former Editor of the Family Business Review and the Journal of Family Business Strategy (of which he was co-founder). He has over 45 years of experience studying and working with family companies and has sat on the boards of 7 professional associations and non-profits, and 21 businesses (17 family and 4 non-family); currently serving on 11 boards in a wide variety of industries (e.g., heavy and ag equipment, food manufacturing, building materials manufacturing, restaurants, automotive, healthcare, insurance, and commercial, residential and industrial real estate development and holding). He is also an experienced trustee having served as a trustee on multiple trusts since the 1980s. Before focusing on his board work, he gained extensive experience consulting with more than 100 family businesses, including some of the largest business families around the world.

Joe is Emeritus Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at Kennesaw State University, where he previously served as Executive Director of the Cox Family Enterprise Center, and where he developed an executive MBA for businesses families. Today, he is a Family Business Fellow with the Smith Family Business Initiative at Cornell University, visiting scholar at Germany’s Witten/Herdecke University, the Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen, Luzern
Switzerland, and Affiliated Professor at the Centre for Family Entrepreneurship and Ownership at Sweden’s Jönköping International Business School.

Joe has received numerous awards for his research, writing and service, including top honors from the Family Firm Institute (Beckhard Award, International Award, fellow status), the Family Business Network International, the International Family Enterprise Research Academy (of which he is a fellow and member of the founding team) and was recently honored with a Lifetime Influence and Impact Award from the Family Enterprise Research Conference at the
University of Vermont in 2019.

Joe earned BA, MA, MPhil and PhD degrees from Yale University. He is based in Atlanta.