Family as the Heart of Family Business with Thomasina H. Williams

Voice of African Family Business with AFF

Thomasina’s work in the wealth management and family business consulting arenas focuses primarily on families, rather than their financial assets. She works with business-owning families and individuals helping them build stronger relationships, have conversations about sensitive subjects, and make difficult decisions so that their family flourishes and their business thrives across generations.

She was the first consultant hired by one of the largest private banks in the U.S. to go in-house and play a leadership role in building a new internal group to support its ultra-high net worth clients in navigating the family side of wealth.

Prior to her work with families, Thomasina practised law in Miami where she was recognized as one of the Top 250 Lawyers in South Florida, the Miami-Dade County Commission acknowledged her extensive pro bono legal work on public interest cases by naming a day in her honour, and a local bar association proclaimed her a “Living Legend.”

Between her groundbreaking accomplishments as a lawyer and her current work helping families transform their lives and their legacies, Thomasina was a program officer at the Ford Foundation, the second-largest private philanthropic institution in the U.S. At the Ford Foundation, she made more than $42 million in investments to strengthen the non-profit sector.Her own family’s lived experience fuels Thomasina’s passion for helping other families avoid the fracturing of family relationships and the loss of wealth that defines the “shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves-in-three generations” proverb for far too many family businesses around the globe.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School. She holds certificates in Advanced Family Business Advising and Family Wealth Advising from the Family Firm Institute. She is also a member of the Purposeful Planning Institute, where she serves on its Advisory Board; the Galliard Family Business Advisor Institute; the Independent Trustee Alliance and The Florida Bar. Additionally, Thomasina serves on the Advisory Board of Enterprising Women magazine, which reaches nearly a million women entrepreneurs in 185 countries around the globe. Thomasina also serves as a Teaching Fellow with Heroic Public Speaking, a leading training company for keynote speakers worldwide.

She is based in Florida, in the U.S.A., and is the founder of Sankofa Legacy Advisors. Thomasina can be reached directly via LinkedIn or e-mail at [e-mail], or via her firm website - www.sankofalegacyadvisors.com

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