International Advisory Board

Pat is a Family Wealth Consultant and Family Leadership Coach. 

As an advisor to families of wealth, family leaders, and family offices Pat provides coaching and consultation on effective communication about wealth and its impact on family dynamics, engagement with the rising generation of family leaders, governance and decision-making in family business, and vision and mission planning for family philanthropy and family enterprise. 

Pat was a co-founder and senior director of the Institute for Family Culture with Abbot Downing, Wells Fargo’s multi-family office and was head of Family Dynamics at Wells Fargo Family Wealth. She was the human resources director for Wells Fargo’s Private Bank and held a series of management roles focused on developing talent.

In her earliest professional life, Pat was an independent management consultant to family businesses and nonprofit organizations, a faculty member in psychology and a mental health program director. 

Pat holds a doctoral degree in psychology and a certificate in executive coaching from Columbia University.  She is a member of the Family Firm Institute (FFI), the American Psychological Association (APA) and serves on the Advisory Board of the Global Family Office Community.

Being born in Germany, raised in Madrid, and having lived in key cities around the world, Marta has a truly global perspective both in her personal and professional life. She has managed multinational corporations and has founded private investment firms that have become role models for excellence and profitability.

Her knowledge, experience, and natural leadership skills, as well as her excellence in management relationships, have allowed her to command the attention of big audiences in investing and trading live seminars, which lead Marta to personally coach investors helping them reach their goals and empower their lives both personally and professionally. Her success comes from her ability to combine strong values, passion, experience, common sense and love for human relations. She has always believed that “if there is no meaning and passion behind what you do, you will not succeed.”

Currently, Marta shares responsibility managing the family investments, leads the business activities, and is member of a few large investment advisory committees. She is a very well respected investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist and senior adviser to family offices and corporations worldwide.

Meeting people from all over the world, being married with and having the love and support of an extraordinary man, as well as her knowledge, experience, natural leadership skills and her excellence in management relationships have given her the edge to make the ordinary extraordinary, always striding towards greatness.

Ruben Vardanyan is an Armenian social entrepreneur, impact investor and venture philanthropist.

A recognized expert on the global economy, entrepreneurship and education, he provides strategic consulting through his membership of boards of directors, advisory boards and trusteeships of commercial companies, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, and public and professional bodies. Among them are the IFC (World Bank Group), business schools, Aznavour Foundation, and a major Armenian bank (Ameriabank).

A prominent financier, Ruben is known both for his commercial projects as well as his deep reaching philanthropic programs, such as the first UWC college in Eastern Europe (Dilijan, Armenia) and the Tatev Revival Project, part of which includes the construction of the world’s longest cableway leading to an ancient monastery.

Together with their partners, Ruben and his family have invested about $600M in projects in Armenia, developing a commercial approach that relies on involving blended financing to find solutions to social problems.

In 2015, Ruben co-founded another global project, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors.

James is passionate about growing businesses and especially enjoys supporting and mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs.

He is a Non-Executive Director of his 142 year old family-owned UK manufacturing business, Centurion Safety Products, where the shareholders he represents span three generations.

He is a Partner at Positive Momentum where he helps his clients change, grow and lead. He is also an adviser to BGF where he provides deal support for their potential investments.  

James is heavily involved with a charity called Tofauti which supports Africa’s wildlife and communities. He is also a trustee of the Carmen Benevolent Trust which gives money to transport and educational causes.

The majority of his Executive career was spent as a private equity backed CFO. His successes include the sale of uSwitch to Zoopla for £190m.

Lynn Zovighian is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and opera singer. She is the co-founder of the Zovighian Partnership, a family-owned social investment platform dedicated to research and data-led strategic planning, policy development, and governance in private and public philanthropy. She is also the founder of the Zovighian Public Office, her family’s philanthropic arm, which serves communities facing genocide and other crimes of atrocity. Lynn is a contributor to global publications including Newsweek, Wilson Center, CNN, Arab News, and An-Nahar. Most recently, she returned to the stage as a performing musician and convenes musicians for socio-economic impact and cultural dialogue. 
 

Lynn sits on the advisory boards of the Global Family Office Community and Middle East auction house, Artscoops. She is a former member of the Board of Governors of the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon. She lectures on giving power to communities, business building, and social investing and has given seminars at London Business School and Northeastern University.

Prior to founding her venture and family philanthropy, Lynn was a private banker at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management, servicing family offices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She also worked with her father in his construction trading business, SPG, where she led a corporate turnaround strategy. She was a strategic management consultant for Pictet & Cie and a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group Middle East, where she served as the Middle East knowledge expert for their global private wealth management practice. 

Lynn has an MBA in Finance from London Business School and a BA and double minor in Political Science, American Studies, and Islamic History. She is based in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. 

John Stevenson has thirty years experience working with and for ultra high net worth international families. 

He is based in London and is currently Head of a Single Family Office.

Previously John was CEO of the Private Office London where he was a Primary Advisor to members of a significant Middle East Royal Family. Having completed a Next Gen hand over John remains as an advisor.

John has also held senior management positions for well know luxury brands which have usually been part of a private family’s portfolio of trophy assets. These have included The Chanel Group, Sotheby’s, Edmiston, Asprey, Garrard and Thomas Goode.

Granted the Freedom of the City of London in recognition of charitable fundraising and the promotion of British manufacturing  / craftsmanship globally. 

Previous grantee of Royal Warrants from the late HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and HRH The Prince of Wales . (King Charles III).

Mike is a leadership communications and storytelling specialist who works with global corporations, governments and family businesses.

He has more than 20 years of experience in journalism and media, as a reporter/presenter for Reuters, Sky News and the BBC, where he was an on-screen correspondent covering politics, economics and the Middle East. 

Since 2014, Mike has specialised in media training, presentation coaching, speech writing and narrative development. 

He was previously a director in a UK communications agency where he built a leadership communications service for corporate clients across multiple sectors including wealth management, banking, professional services, telecoms and energy. 

Mike then set up and ran a boutique leadership coaching firm in London, which provided communications training programmes for VIPs and senior business leaders around the world. 

He is an experienced public speaker, podcaster and the author of a book about leadership communication.