Dr. Annette Rahael

Dr. Annette Rahael

Family Business Advisor

Dr. Annette Rahael is a Family Business Advisor. Annette has built on her years of personal experience in a family business by pursuing more structured training in the United States, where this has been recognized as an area in need of specialized expertise. She is uniquely equipped to advise families in business on strategies and structures to ensure that their business is meeting the professional standards required to compete successfully. She helps family businesses address the challenges peculiar to family companies such as smooth transitions from one generation to the next. She brings to the table a profound understanding of the commercial realities faced by businesses of all sizes prior to founding her practice in 2004, Annette Rahael held a senior position in her family’s Trinidad based business for eighteen years. She has lived through resolving issues that affect family businesses while being responsible for key functions in a rapidly growing company.

Annette obtained her doctorate from George Washington University. Her doctoral dissertation on Co-CEOs in Family Business was awarded the international Best Dissertation Prize 2012 by the Family Firm Institute. Annette is a Fellow of the Institute and carries the designation ACFBA– Advanced Certificate in Family Business Advising. She is the first person in the Caribbean to have achieved that status. She has recently been awarded a research grant from the Family Owned Business Institute to conduct further research in Co-CEOs in Family Business and her poster presentation on that research has won a prize at the 2015 Family Enterprise Research Conference.

Annette has also received her professional certification in executive coaching and works with individuals in family and non-family businesses in this area.

She has written on the topic of Family Business and has presented at family business conferences. She has designed and conducted Family Business presentations and workshops in Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Surinam and the Cayman Islands. She works directly with family businesses throughout the Caribbean in areas of Family Business Governance, Succession Planning, Next Generation Coaching and Organization Development.

She has also designed and conducted workshops on the Meaning of Work, Difficult Conversations, The Art of Listening and Emotional Intelligence.

Dr. Rahael has written columns on Family Business for the Trinidad and Tobago Business Guardian.