Senior Advisors

Our Senior Advisors complement and support our consulting team with their extensive experience and network in matters of family business governance and succession topics as well as particular sector expertise.

Nelson Echeverría López

Nelson Echeverría López

Colombia

Nelson Echeverría is an Agro-Engineer and Master in Business Administration of the Universidad de Chile, and a graduate of the Senior Executive Education Program of Columbia University.

He started his professional career as a manager for Química Stauffer Chile and for ICI in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador. In 1994, he joined BASF as part of the leadership team in Mexico and as member of the Regional Board for Central America and the Caribbean. From 1995 to 2015, he acted as CEO of BASF for the Andean region.

Nelson was active in various leadership functions in the Colombian industrial sector, e.g. as President of the Agro Division of the Association of Colombian Industrialists, as VP of the German-Colombian Chamber of Commerce and as co-founder of the German-Colombian Association for Science and Technology. He is currently president of the Chilean-Colombian Chamber of Commerce.

Nelson has broad experience in corporate strategy, HR and leadership/change management. He was in charge of numerous restructurings, M&A projects and transformations of corporate culture. He serves on several corporate boards in Latin America.

Davy Lau

Davy Lau

Singapore
Davy Lau was born and raised in Hong Kong. He then lived and worked for 16 years in Japan and 2 years in Australia before settling down in Singapore. He has a bachelor’s degree from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and a Master of Economics from Hitotsubashi University in Japan.

Davy has close to 30 years of successful track record running businesses in Asia Pacific, covering markets in China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. He has held various positions including the VP of Information Business at Citicorp, GM Far East at GTECH Corporation, and Global Partner/Singapore and MD at Egon Zehnder. While at Egon Zehnder, Davy recruited hundreds of CEOs and executives for multinational and Asian corporations, for some of them he also led management appraisals and board consulting projects.

Since 2011, Davy has served on the Boards of companies listed on NASDAQ, HKEX and SGX in sectors such as IT solutions & services, real estate investment and consumer goods & retail, as well as charities and education institutions such as Make-A-Wish Foundation Singapore and United World College of Southeast Asia. His Board responsibilities have been in chairing their nominating & remuneration committees and/or as their lead independent directors. He has also advised the business owners or majority shareholders of these companies in building leadership bench strength, succession planning as well as talent management and leadership development.

Andreas Gräf

Andreas Gräf

Germany
Andreas Gräf was born in Switzerland and raised in Germany. After a commercial apprenticeship to “Wirtschafts-Assistant” at Henkel KGaA he received his Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Cologne. Andreas started his professional career in Market Research and Marketing at Henkel KGaA and later worked for several years in Marketing and Sales roles for the US-based family business Mars Inc. He was member of the Management Team in Germany, responsible for Marketing and POS Marketing, and additionally for the management of several European brands.

Afterward, Andreas Gräf joined the global management consultancy Egon Zehnder, where – over 25 years – he focused on clients in the Consumer Goods and Retail sector. As a Partner, he led the firm’s Dusseldorf office for several years, managed the Consumer and Retail Practice in Germany, and was member of several international practice groups. His special focus was on advising Family Businesses and owners at the interface of management and ownership. He worked on many leadership and succession challenges in management and boards, management appraisals, potential analysis, and the development of executives and organisations. As an advisor, he also drew upon his training as a Systemic Coach.

Today, Andreas is working as an independent Consultant, Coach and Mentor.

Dr. Alexander Koeberle-Schmid

Dr. Alexander Koeberle-Schmid

Germany
Alexander Koeberle-Schmid was born in Germany on Lake Constance and grew up as part of an entrepreneurial family. He studied at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and earned his PhD on the topic of “Family Business Governance.” His areas of expertise are ownership strategy, succession, advisory boards, family governance, and conflict management. He has already supported more than 140 entrepreneurial families in these areas.

His work is based on the premise that conflict in family businesses is the norm. His goal is therefore to promote understanding among the parties involved, in order to support them in finding common solutions to conflicts – or to develop strategies and structures to prevent conflict from arising in the first place. Therefore, the focus of his work is the conscientious guidance of families in developing solutions that all parties can agree on, so that they can orient themselves in the same direction and find harmony. Alexander Koeberle-Schmid acts from personal experience and incorporates it into every case individually. This helps him to develop sustainable strategies with the families and to help them avoid future conflicts.

Since 2005, he has advised family businesses and entrepreneurial families as an ownership strategy consultant, mediator (BM ©), and family business coach (ICF), with tenures at KPMG and PwC as well as INTES Academy for Family Businesses, with which he continues to collaborate today. He is the author of eight books and numerous studies on the topics of succession, leadership, and conflict resolution.