Hubler Award: Jon Keimig
Since 2016, Jon Keimig has been director of the University of St. Thomas Family Business Center, the only family business center in the state. For his work providing educational and networking opportunities for business-owning families and their advisers, Keimig is the 2023 winner of the Hubler Award for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Working with Family Businesses.
“Jon has been multifaceted in terms of his commitment to family businesses,” says Tom Hubler, founder of Minneapolis-based consultancy Hubler for Business Families and the creator of the Minnesota Family Business Awards. “He’s done an extraordinary job of providing services to family businesses, and he also has developed an excellent educational program for family business professionals.”
Keimig was appointed director in 2016 after three years working for the Family Business Center and St. Thomas’s Schulze School of Entrepreneurship. The year after becoming director, he earned certification in family business advising from the Boston-based Family Firm Institute.
The Family Business Center has created several programs since Keimig took over that he says are making a positive impact. Those programs include family-business peer groups facilitated by family business advisers. The groups are specific to “next generation” family members, women, or family business executives.
Six years ago, the center also launched a luncheon series for advisers. “I wanted to start something that helps the entire family business ecosystem,” Keimig says. The luncheons give advisers and their family business clients an opportunity to discuss common issues and challenges and to collaborate on solutions.
“Our members love to learn from other family businesses,” Keimig notes. “We always bring in at least a couple of panels a year that they can identify with and learn from.”
The topics covered in the center’s programs are chosen with members in mind. Those topics are often pain points they’re struggling with, Keimig says. One of last year’s programs dealt with the issue of “fair versus equal”—often a fraught subject for both parents and offspring.
Currently, 95 families belong to the Family Business Center, and Keimig says membership is growing. His next goal is diversification. The Family Business Center offers events specific to Black-owned family businesses, and Keimig has been reaching out to businesses in underrepresented areas of the metro and state.
“A lot of family businesses don’t know we exist, and they don’t know the conversations they need to have, or they may be avoiding them,” Keimig says. “We’d like to give them the tools to have those conversations with their families.”
