Your Faculty
We’ve assembled a world-class faculty of researchers, thought leaders and industry innovators on topics relating to multigenerational wealth transfer in successful families.
Karen Weisgerber, PhD
Cambium Consulting
Institute for Preparing Heirs®
Karen brings to her engagements and expertise developed over 30 years of working with inheritors and wealth creators as a clinical and consulting psychologist. Karen’s engagements are informed by her involvement in research at the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy and through the Wisdom and Wealth Project (a Templeton funded endeavor).
In addition to her work with individuals and families, Karen has been instrumental in advancing the concepts and training processes offered from the Institute for Preparing Heirs on issues of wealth in families. Karen completed her Ph.D. at Boston College, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuropsychology in affiliation with Harvard Medical School.
Kathleen Kennelly
National Training Director
Institute for Preparing Heirs®
Kathleen is a dynamic, engaging and passionate speaker with 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, providing advisors with innovative ways to look at their businesses and client bases. As National Training Director, Kathleen brings a keen understanding of the new opportunities financial advisors have to differentiate and build their businesses by offering new generational wealth planning tools and resources to successful individuals and families as a Trusted Family Advisor®—one who prepares the entire family to thrive and prosper across generations.
Kathleen holds the Certified Private Wealth Advisor (CPWA®) certification, the Chartered Retirement Plan CounselorSM (CRPC®) designation, the Certified Fund Specialist® (CFS®) designation and the Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) and Chartered Life Underwriter® (CLU®) designations.
Robert Kenny, Ed. D.
North Bridge Advisory Group
Bob has been a visiting faculty member of the Institute for Preparing Heirs® since 2010. Bob brings to the Institute and its advisors, an insightful perspective on the impact of wealth on families, drawn from his work as field director for contemporary research conducted at Boston College and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This research focused on the joys, dilemmas, and aspirations of individuals from affluent households.
Having 30 years of practical and research experience in developmental, counseling, and educational psychology, and through his work at the North Bridge Advisory Group and as the Executive Director of More Than Money, Bob understands the complex emotional quandaries and interpersonal dilemmas faced by parents and children in affluent households and is able to apply these to wealth transfer planning advice offered to affluent families by their trusted advisors. A former Associate of Education at the Harvard Center for Moral Education, Bob earned his doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Boston University.
David Vaughn
North Bridge Advisory Group
David brings to the Institute for Preparing Heirs® faculty a 30-year career in Social Entrepreneurship with a focus on exploring the relationships between Passion, Purpose and Impact. He guides client families as they explore the voluminous and diverse opportunities for maximizing their civic engagement and social impact. David’s career spans the fields of journalism, politics, public policy, non-profit leadership, education, and philanthropy. He was a journalist for the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Business Journal, and editor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where he worked on curriculum development projects funded by the National Science Foundation.
A graduate of Boston University, David attended the American School in London, and St. Lawrence University. Most recently David has pursued studies in family dynamics through the Bowen Center.
Carol J. Scott, M.D., MSEd, FACEP
Dr. Scott is a practicing emergency physician, author, wellness consultant, and coach to busy professionals. She joined the faculty of Institute for Preparing Heirs® in 2013 when the Institute expanded its training curriculum to address the need for trusted advisors to include health and wellness management as a part of a family’s estate plan. The Institute selected Dr. Scott because of her expertise for providing effective, science-based approaches for managing optimal health and wellness. Her insights as a thought leader in stress, wellness, and health management have been covered by numerous publications. Dr. Scott trained in Internal Medicine at Duke University, Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, and earned a Masters in Education from Johns Hopkins University.
Amy Castoro
President and CEO of The Williams Group
Amy brings to the Institute for Preparing Heirs a powerful understanding about how to build family trust, generate communication between generations, and how advisors can meaningfully access the rising generation of successful families and family businesses. Amy has more than two decades of experience in helping highly successful families prepare the next generation to transfer family wealth and values for a sustainable legacy. Since assuming the leadership of The Williams Group in 2017, Amy has continued to build upon the foundational family consulting work pioneered by Institute co-founder Roy Williams. She is a Master Somatic Coach through the Strozzi Institute. Amy published her first book, Bridging Generations, in 2017. Her articles on wealth transition have appeared in Forbes, Trust & Estates, CNN, Financial Advisor and Harvard Business Review.
Bill Kruse
Managing Partner
Lagerlof, Senecal, Gosney & Kruse, LLC
Bill joined the faculty of Institute for Preparing Heirs® after completing its Original 2 Day Workshop in 2012. Bill shares how he has successfully integrated the Institute’s tools and best practices into his estate planning practice through case study examples of at-risk client families who have benefited. For more than 30 years, Bill has counseled clients in the difficult areas related to wealth transition, especially within a closely held family business, balancing sound tax planning with the emotional needs of families affected by the business. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business administration and an M.B.A., with an emphasis in management. He received his law degree from USC in 1979.
Vic Preisser
Founding Director
Institute for Preparing Heirs®
Vic is co-author of the widely read and highly regarded books, Preparing Heirs and Philanthropy, Heirs & Values. In 2009, having spent more than a decade working with families as an executive coach and mentor to heirs for The Williams Group, a family coaching firm, Vic saw a need for families’ trusted advisors to create awareness among clients of the impact of family dynamics and unprepared heirs on successful wealth transfer. That same year, he co-founded Institute for Preparing Heirs® where he authored the book, Family Meetings and co-wrote Executors, Trustees & Beneficiaries.
Carol Sherman
Managing Director
Carol joined the Institute for Preparing Heirs at its inception in early 2009, bringing more than 25 years of experience as a results-driven manager and marketer with strong writing, communications, creative and strategic planning skills. She manages client relationships, oversees the Institute’s workshop programs, and the Institute’s marketing and content strategies, and has authored numerous articles on topics of interest to wealth managers. Prior to joining the Institute, she served as Marketing Director for a large national independent mortgage lender where she utilized her team-building skills to successfully lead business development and marketing functions for one of the company’s most profitable divisions. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the School of Journalism at The Ohio State University.
Contact Carol at CSherman@preparingheirs.com
