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 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 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
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
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.