International Advisory Board

Patricia M. Armstrong

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.

Marta Albert

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

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 in Russia and Brazil, Aznavour Foundation, a major Armenian bank (Ameriabank) and Russia’s auto major (SOLLERS).

A prominent financier, Ruben is known both for his commercial projects (investment companies Troika Dialog and Vardanyan, Broitman and Partners) 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. They have also raised over $500M to finance the first private business school in Russia – a pioneering institution both in terms of scale and in its collaborative nature.

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. He spends a significant amount of his time on projects related to the development and professionalization of charity infrastructure in Russia (Philanthropy Infrastructure – PHILIN) and the questions of wealth and legacy curation (Phoenix Advisors). With support from Ruben, Troika Dialog, SKOLKOVO business school and several charitable foundations, classics of world business literature were published in Russia. Since 2016 he has chaired the judging panel of the PwC “Business Book of the Year in Russia” Award.

Lynn Zovighian

Lynn Zovighian is Managing Director at the The Zovighian Partnership, a private power brokerage house that partners with significant families to professionalize and grow their power bases to deliver sustainable impact in business and society. Together, the team and their partners create and deploy impactful forms of capital such as intellectual equity, succession sustainability, and philanthropic capital.
 

Lynn sits on the board of the Global Family Office Community headquartered in London and is a member of the Board of Governors of the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon. She is also a regular guest lecturer at the London Business School. 

Prior to founding The Zovighian Partnership, Lynn was a private banker at Barclays Wealth & Investment Management, servicing family offices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She also worked with her father in his construction trading business, Sehnaoui Plant Group of Companies, where she turned around the business, introducing a new talent management platform and business development processes to the firm. Before this, Lynn was a strategic management consultant for Pictet & Cie and a consultant for the start-up team of The Boston Consulting Group Middle East, where she served as the Middle East knowledge expert for their private wealth management practice. Her consulting experience focused on governance, setting up family office platforms, as well as start-up and turnaround strategies.

Lynn has an MBA in Finance from London Business School and a BA and double minor in Political Studies, American Studies, and Islamic History.

John Stevenson

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 Harbour Partners 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).

James Davis

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. 

Sophia Tutino

Sophia is a Yacht Charter and Charter Management Expert and is the founder of Sophia Tutino Yachting Ltd, a boutique yachting company specialising in servicing Single & Multi Family Offices.

Sophia previously lead the global charter operations of three of the most established and highest regarded yachting companies in the world for over twelve years. This includes globally managing a fleet of over 30 luxury yachts ranging from 100ft+, as well as heading the international charter operations coordinating relationships and communications across all offices worldwide. Her experience in luxury services also extends to past roles in Private Aviation and Luxury Property Development. Having been born and raised in France and educated in both Italy and the UK, Sophia speaks three languages fluently (French, Italian and English) which has helped her develop a truly international profile.

With an uncompromising approach to customer experience, quality of service and surpassing client expectations, Sophia acts as the Family Office Yachting Expert in a very transparent, unbiased and insightful role; providing Families with the best service in-house. By operating exclusively in the Yacht Charter industry she has an unsurpassed understanding and number of connections in the international charter market, enabling her to offer the highest quality service to her clients on a personal level.

In addition to serving on the Global Family Office Community Advisory Board, Sophia volunteers for various charities and associations and maintains active participation in a range of the most relevant yachting associations globally such as Charter Yacht Brokers Association (CYBA), International Yacht Brokers Association (IYBA) and European Committee for Professionals in Yachting (ECPY). She is also a mentor for the entrepreneur accelerator programme Yachting Ventures for her experience in the yacht charter industry.

Mike Sergeant

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.