The Family Business Center, formerly the Center for Family Enterprise, is celebrating its 20th anniversary as a center at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. The center was initially founded and funded in 1990 by St. Thomas trustee Harry McNeely Jr. In 1993, the Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst family funded the Opus Endowed Chair in Family Enterprise. The center’s activities have included serving both family businesses and advisers to family businesses, offering courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels and promoting scholarship about family business.
The center celebrated its anniversary with a special program for family businesses cosponsored by Minnesota Business Magazine on Oct. 8. The program featured representatives from the McNeely and Richard Murphy families who discussed succession in their family businesses.