BFI@SMU WEBINAR SERIES

Speakers' Profile

Iraj Ispahani, Chief Executive Officer, Ispahani Advisory Ltd.

Iraj Ispahani is the CEO of Ispahani Advisory Ltd. and is based in London. Ispahani Advisory advises family businesses on business strategy, governance, people, and education. The firm operates internationally across EMEA and APAC and specialises in working with family and private businesses, private foundations and wealth owners.

Iraj also serves as a Group Director and Board Member of the Ispahani Group, a family business headquartered in Bangladesh which marks 200 years in 2020. Prior to joining the family business Iraj held global and regional leadership roles in banking at JP Morgan and talent management at Korn/Ferry where he focused on advising the buy side including asset and wealth managers, hedge funds and private equity firms. He also co-founded Cantos an online corporate communications business in 2001.

During his sixteen-year career at JP Morgan, where he was Global COO of the Financial Institutions Group, Iraj worked in fixed-income markets, investment banking and asset and wealth management. At the JP Morgan Private Bank in London and Geneva Iraj advised wealth owners on investment strategy and generational planning. At Korn/Ferry he led financial services across EMEA and advised clients on governance, leadership and talent. He was also global head of client strategy and a member of the office of the CEO.

In January 2020 Iraj was appointed Chair of The Shakespeare’s Globe Council. Prior to this, Iraj served as its Deputy Chairman and Trustee as well as Chairman of the Remuneration and Nominations Committee. He was till recently a Member of the Advisory Board of ‘Seeing is Believing’, Standard Chartered Bank’s global initiative to tackle avoidable blindness in collaboration with The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). In October 2019 Iraj was appointed as an Independent Trustee of the newly established Standard Chartered Foundation. Iraj is an Advisor to UNICEF in the UK and in Bangladesh. Iraj is also a Founding Advisor to the Responsible Family Business and Wealth Ownership program created by Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education and is one of the lecturers and facilitators for that course.

Iraj was educated at Winchester College and holds a Master’s of Philosophy degree in international relations from Cambridge University and a Bachelor’s Degree (with honours) from London University in politics and history.

Philip Marcovici, Offices of Philip Marcovici

Philip Marcovici is retired from the practice of law and consults with governments, financial institutions and global families in relation to tax, wealth management and other matters. Philip is on the boards of several entities within the wealth management industry, as well as of entities within family succession and philanthropic structures.

Philip is actively involved in teaching in the areas of taxation, wealth management and family governance. He is a member of the adjunct faculties of Singapore Management University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU). He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Tanoto Center for Asian Family Business and Entrepreneurship Studies. Philip is a Founding Advisor to the Responsible Family Business and Wealth Ownership program created by Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education and is one of the lecturers and facilitators for that course.

Philip was a partner of Baker & McKenzie, a firm he joined in 1982, and practiced in the area of international taxation throughout his legal career. Philip was based in the Hong Kong office of Baker & McKenzie for twelve years, relocating to the Zurich office of Baker & McKenzie in 1996. Philip has also practiced law in each of New York and Vancouver, British Columbia. Philip retired from Baker & McKenzie at the end of 2009.

In 2013, Philip received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Estate and Trust Practitioners.

In 2016, Philip had his latest book, The Destructive Power of Family Wealth, published by John Wiley & Sons.

Moderator

Dr Kenneth Goh, Interim Academic Director, Business Families Institute, Singapore Management University, and Assistant Professor of Strategic Management, Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Dr Kenneth Goh is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Singapore Management University. Dr Goh obtained his Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University under the Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship and also holds undergraduate and post-graduate degrees from Wharton and Harvard, respectively. As an expert on organisational routines and team processes in innovation, his research has been published in the top academic journals in Management. Dr Goh has won teaching awards from SMU and the Ivey Business School in Canada, as well as written best-selling case studies on family business, innovation, entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship used by business schools globally. As the Academic Director of the Business Families Institute, he spearheads BFI’s educational and research initiatives to fuel the entrepreneurialism, legacy, and impact of business families.