Nancy Drozdow

Nancy Drozdow, Principal, is one of CFAR’s five founders and a member of the firm’s Board of Directors. Nancy co-leads CFAR’s Family Enterprise and Owner-Led Business practice and has been instrumental in the development of CFAR’s approach to strategy. Nancy is internationally known for her expertise as a thinking partner to leaders, successors, and successor candidates across the family enterprise. Nancy helps her clients creatively identify and test options, and then make hard choices, working through the structures, processes, people, and metrics that can enable or stand in the way of productive action. CFAR has effected its own succession process, with second generation of principals in important positions of leadership.

Nancy is a founder of the Family Firm Institute (FFI), a global resource created to provide interdisciplinary intelligence, education, and professional development to educators and professionals serving the family business and family wealth fields. She is also an FFI Fellow and served on the organization’s original board. She is past President of FFI’s Mid-Atlantic chapter. Nancy won the 2012 Richard Beckhard Practice Award from the Family Firm Institute, which annually honors a founding member and distinguished practitioner in the family enterprise field, recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of family business practice. Recently, Nancy served as Mentor for FFI’s next generation of practitioners, meeting regularly to advance their thinking and practice. She is one of a handful of field leaders who, together through the 2086 Society, are setting the long-term agenda for research that can improve understanding and practice, as both family and business evolve.

Nancy has lectured widely on topics such as exit and continuity, governance, succession including aligning interests across and within generations, leadership and organization development for both businesses and families, and competition and growth. Her work and ideas have been published in the business press including Sloan Management Review, Business Week, CEO Magazine, Family Business Magazine, the Journal of Management Consulting, Family Business Review, the New York Times and other publications.

Nancy holds an MBA in Strategy from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.