Catherwood LibraryILR School

In a study released last month, researchers for the MassMutual Financial Group/Raymond Institute American Family Business Survey found that female leaders may be part of the future for a growing number of family-owned businesses in the U.S. Although women still make up less than ten percent of CEO's at family business, over one third of the businesses surveyed for the study said that their next CEO may be female---up from twenty-five percent in 1997. According to study researcher and Loyola University Small Business Center executive director Andrew Keyt, this increase in the number of family businesses open to female leadership is due to a shift from long-held assumptions that sons would take over to evaluations of the competency of potential successors.