Christina Wing is a Senior Lecturer teaching in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School. She currently teaches first year TOM (Technology Operations Management) and first year LCA (Leadership and Corporate Accountability) students. Mrs. Wing is also an active participant in teaching and chairing Executive Education Programs that specialize in operations and family office work. Christina currently gives many speeches on leadership and understanding the different chapters of your life and has a passion for researching tradeoffs. She firmly believes that you can have it all, just not all at once.
Prior to teaching at Harvard Business School, Christina held a variety of roles within the Finance and General Management fields. She was most recently President and CEO of a family office where she oversaw a team of people and assets within real estate, art, collectables, private investments and philanthropic activities. Mrs. Wing’s prior experience included being a founder of Wing O’Donnell Ventures, an independent financial consulting and investment advisory practice. Christina was the CFO and head of operations at a startup venture formed by several of her HBS classmates that she joined in the early stages. She began her career in equities and energy investment banking, where she worked at Goldman Sachs and Kidder Peabody. Notably, Christina spent a year in Australia working on the privatization of the utility industry. She has served on many company boards.
A native of The Woodlands, Texas she graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1993 with a BBA in Finance and Organizational Behavior and Business Policy and she also earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1998.
Mrs. Wing is a very active participant in several charitable organizations. She is currently on the board of The Steppingstone Foundation, Operation Grateful Nation and Aspen Junior Golf. Christina resides in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts with her husband Tad and their three children.
For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for urban Indian families. Over the 2010s, Gera had multiplied its area under development threefold; it had introduced its new ChildCentric vision of family housing villages (which incorporated children’s academies in skills from swimming to singing into the real estate complex); and it had expanded its operations from Pune to the nearby state of Goa. Meanwhile, Rohit’s brother Nikhil—a California resident—had invested company funds in several construction projects overseas in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2020, the company stood at a crossroads. With Rohit beginning to envision the end of his managerial career, Gera had several key decisions to make: Should it double down on ChildCentric, introduce new age-differentiated offerings to serve its customers throughout their lives, or return to a more commoditized style of real estate development? To what extent should Gera cast in its lot with Nikhil’s U.S. projects? Should the company consider other avenues for international expansion? And to whom would Rohit pass the torch of Gera’s leadership—his daughter Diya, or an outside professional manager?
This supplemental case tracks the results of the Colman and Taubman-Dye class action suit against Theranos as well as Theranos’ other legal challenges and chronicles the final demise of the company in 2019.
Hsieh, Nien-he, and Christina R. Wing. "Theranos: Who Has Blood on Their Hands? (A) and (B)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 620-102, February 2020.
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This case covers the rise and fall of Theranos, the company founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2004 to revolutionize the blood testing industry by creating a device that could provide from a small finger prick the same results and accuracy as intravenous blood draws. As founder and CEO, Holmes was hailed as the most successful female tech entrepreneur ever. In October 2015, however, a Wall Street Journal article exposed internal struggles and questioned the startup’s trajectory. Subsequent investigations revealed that Theranos, despite commercial operations in 40 retail locations, lacked a functioning product. Set in 2017, the (A) Case opens with Theranos’ motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit filed by two investors who claimed that Theranos and its officers had violated California’s securities law and engaged in fraud.
Thermax is an engineering company in India that provides integrated solutions in energy, environment, and chemicals. The Aga family along with family trusts owns 62% of the company. Post a restructuring exercise in 2000, Thermax transforms itself from a small family business to a professionally managed $850 million conglomerate. Meher Pudumjee (family) is the current chairperson of the board. The case traces the journey of the company under the leadership of Meher’s father, Rohinton Aga, who builds the business; her mother, Anu Aga, who restructures the company and professionalises it; and finally under Meher and the professional management team. In 2019, with the incumbent CEO scheduled to retire, Meher feels the company stands at a critical inflexion point and needs to rethink its strategy for the future. While historically Thermax has groomed people from within to take on leadership roles, she feels the next chapter of growth requires a completely fresh perspective and initiates a search for an external candidate. What qualities should the ideal candidate possess? How will this new incumbent integrate and extract loyalty as an outsider? Will the culture of the organization need to adapt in order to allow the new CEO to drive change?
Wing, Christina R. "Sopra Banking Software: Can a French Fintech Succeed in the U.S.?" Harvard Business School Case 620-004, September 2019. (Revised September 2020.)
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This case describes how Ali Sabancı and his sister Emine Sabancı Kamışlı, shareholders of Esas Group, one of Turkey’s largest family-owned investment firms, worked to grow and professionalize the business. While their father Şevket Sabancı, played an instrumental role in launching the group in 2000, he soon stepped back and let his children drive the business forward. In 2009, the first of the third generation of family members entered the business, prompting Ali and Emine to start putting formal processes in place for the onboarding and integration of the next generation. By 2019, the family office had several billion dollars of assets under management, diversified across various asset classes, both inside and outside Turkey. Emine’s two sons had recently entered the business. Ali and Emine’s biggest priority was establishing strong governance for the family office. They were taking several steps to professionalize the group and bring in more nonfamily members. Ali and Emine recognized that these actions would mean relinquishing certain privileges and freedom, somewhat shifting from their underlying ethos, which focused on protecting shareholders’ individual rights. Shareholders had been offered liquidity and treated like customers, having the option to invest elsewhere if they so desired. To date, the family members had kept their capital within the group. Would this continue to be the case in the future? How could they keep the family together and make sure everyone was financially satisfied? How could they ensure to continue growing the net worth of their assets?
This case focuses on a large Saudi Arabian industrial conglomerate and family business Zamil Group’s corporate and family governance journey. The 12 sons of the founder led and grew the group successfully after taking over from their father in 1961. The secret to their success was to arrive at all decisions with a consensus, although each had their own approach to dealing with issues. In the mid-1990s, they hired world-class consultants and created manuals and guidelines for governing the business and continuing the growth of the Group’s assets. They were the model for running a family business in Saudi Arabia. However, the increasing number of family members in the group—84 third-generation and 162 fourth-generation members and the upcoming fifth generation—created challenges going forward. They wanted to ensure that the governance principles they had created would evolve and develop in line with the changing dynamics. The upcoming generations did not have jobs waiting for them in the family business simply because they were members of the Zamil family, and not all of them were motivated to remain invested in the businesses. The second-generation and senior members of the third-generation wanted to make sure that they balanced the needs of the business and those of individual family members. They sought to put mechanisms in place that would keep the shares of the business in the family so as to avoid diluting the family’s ownership as they diversified the asset portfolio, addressed diverse risks, and catered to the consumption goals of the next generation. This might mean that the Group would eventually move from being operators to becoming financial investors.
In 2019, Bill Cummings, founder of Cummings Properties and Cummings Foundation and billionaire signer of the Giving Pledge, is winding down his roles at his company and foundation. How should the management move the company forward?
This case describes how Robert Fadel, CEO and chairman of ABC, one of Lebanon’s leading retail and real estate groups, professionalized the family business. Robert was the second son of the company’s founder, Maurice Fadel, who had run it single-handedly. Concerned that the business might be affected by rivalry between his four sons after he died, Maurice set up a trust in 2002 that designated Robert as his successor, and in May of 2009, Maurice revised the trust, granting Robert full control of the board as well. In June 2009, Maurice Fadel passed away, and according to the provisions of the trust, Robert became the chairman and CEO of ABC for a period of five years, with the possibility of extending his term by an additional three years on condition that he had the support of at least one of his brothers. In his new role, Robert set two main goals for the company. First, he wanted to turn ABC into a professionally managed organization at all levels. Second, he wanted to invest in long-term projects that would expand the business. Actualizing his vision was not an easy task given the family conflicts and Lebanon’s economic and political environment. However, Robert achieved both of his goals by the end of his eighth year, in 2017, when he stepped down as ABC’s CEO. The dilemmas at that point were whether he should appoint someone from outside the Fadel family as ABC’s new CEO, and whether he should step down from the board chairmanship.
Wing, Christina R., Esel Y. Cekin, and Samer Al-Rachedy. "From Beirut With Love (A)." Harvard Business School Case 619-024, September 2018. (Revised November 2018.)
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