Thirty years. Many different rooms. The same human patterns.
Christina’s perspective has been shaped by more than thirty years of global business experience and by the many different settings in which she has lived and worked.
Her first exposure to business began at home, growing up with a first-generation entrepreneur – her father. She went on to work in investment banking and later led a family office, building a career that has taken her across industries, cultures, and communities. Having lived in eighteen different places, Christina’s perspective has been shaped by people from many different backgrounds and walks of life.
Today, she teaches at Harvard Business School, where she created the MBA course Demystifying the Family Enterprise and chairs the Executive Education program Families in Business.
Through Wingspan Legacy Partners, Christina advises business-owning families, family offices, founders, boards, and rising-generation leaders on ownership, governance, succession, stewardship, and transition.
Across all of these settings, Christina has seen the same pattern: people do talk about sensitive and taboo topics. They just often talk about them with people who already think like they do – or without the person directly involved.
Family members talk with siblings instead of a parent. Colleagues discuss a leadership concern privately instead of raising it with the person affected. Students leave the classroom and talk about what someone said rather than asking that person to explain what they meant.
The issue is not always that the conversation is not happening. It is that it is happening in the wrong place, without the people who need to be part of it.
Christina’s work focuses on recognizing when that is happening and creating better conditions for a real conversation – clarifying the purpose, considering timing and setting, asking better questions, and listening to what comes back.
