Cooper Biersach
Co-Founder and Adjunct Assistant Professor
Cooper Biersach is the co-founder and Director of the Family Enterprise Center at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Cooper serves as an adjunct assistant professor and teaches coursework in family business. Since 2008, Cooper has worked with over 800 next-generation family business leaders at the Family Enterprise Center.
Cooper also provides leadership coaching and succession planning, governance, and communication consulting to numerous privately held businesses and family enterprises.
Cooper served as the Senior VP, Worldwide Human Resources and as a member of the Executive Committee of Jack Morton Worldwide, a global brand experience and communications agency. In her role, she faced firsthand many of the challenges and opportunities of a family-run business — exponential growth, succession planning, leadership development, acquisitions, global pressures, and the transition of the business by sale to a publicly traded holding company (Interpublic Group).
Cooper is the founding director of the Carolinas Family Office Forum, a leadership and educational peer group for top executives of family offices in North and South Carolina; and she serves on the advisory board of the Carolina Clinic at UNC, a premier executive health program.
Cooper received her BA in English at UNC-Chapel Hill, followed by her MBA and JD with honors. She is a graduate of the Leadership Coaching program at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Learning.