How these women have reshaped their family companies since taking over

Within four years of taking over the business her grandfather founded almost 50 years ago, Elyce Simpson oversaw the transfer of control to nine third-generation owners –which includes Ms. Simpson and eight cousins – set up formal governance structures and launched a new line of business.

“I didn’t waste any time,” says Ms. Simpson, president of Simpson Seeds Inc., a pulse crops processor and exporter in Moose Jaw, Sask., that was launched in 1979 by her grandfather. “To plan is one thing, to do it and implement it [is] another.”

Ms. Simpson is among a small but mighty group of next-generation women business leaders in Canada who are doing more than carrying on the family enterprise – often in a male-dominated field. Instead, they’re making bold moves to reshape the companies founded many years earlier by a father, grandfather or, in a few cases, by a family matriarch.

While women are still largely overlooked in family business succession plans – research in 2019 by U.K.-based Cynergy Bank LLC found men were twice as likely as women to inherit a family business – there are many stories that attest to women’s significant impact on their companies and industries.

Ms. Simpson, for one, has expanded a successful but traditional commodity exporter with the addition of an ingredients business, which is set to roll out pulse flour products – such as lentil flour – this year. She also freed up capital by divesting a grain terminal and hired the Simpson Seeds’ first non-family chief financial officer.

She’s particularly proud of the company’s new governance structure. Working with a family business advisor, Ms. Simpson, her cousins and the company’s second-generation owners – her father and two uncles – established an advisory board to set up a company board of directors. This added a layer of oversight and approvals for major decisions and formalized performance reporting to stakeholders.

Ms. Simpson gives credit to Simpson Seeds’ second-generation owners, who recognized that as the business got passed on, the old way of operating may not work.

“The way they did things were a little more casual and informal, but that likely wasn’t going to work for an expanded ownership group,” says Ms. Simpson, who was elected president in 2021. “So it was important for us to look at what structures would give us the best chance of success.”

On the other side of the country, Anna Patterson, owner of Swifty’s 15 Minute Oil Change Ltd., in Fredericton, N.B., has also been busy building structures, but of the bricks-and-mortar kind.

Since taking over the vehicle oil change business her father started 28 years ago, Ms. Patterson has relocated the company’s original site and is now building a second location.

“It was like my job description changed – I went from running a business to also being almost like a contractor,” recalls Ms. Patterson, who bought the business from her mother in 2017 – her father died without a will in 2007, and the company was in probate until her mother gained ownership. “I was designing these buildings, bringing all of the different elements together and creating something to really improve the customer experience and the business.”

Being the sole owner of Swifty’s has given her the freedom to make decisions without needing approval from other stakeholders, says Ms. Patterson. But she has faced challenges as a female business owner in a male-dominated industry.

“I’ve had situations – including with certain employees – where it was clear I wasn’t being taken seriously and couldn’t get the other person to listen,” says Ms. Patterson. “There’s definitely difficulties with being a woman in this industry.”

Her ability to nurture relationships with customers and suppliers, many of whom have known her since she was a child, is a benefit. Her relationship with one of these suppliers, an auto parts business, led to a joint purchase of a parcel of land.

“I was golfing with the owner, and he said to me, ‘why don’t we buy a chunk of land and build side-by-side on the south side of the river?,’ ” recalls Ms. Patterson. “Fredericton is built around the north side and south side of a river, so now I have a location on either side.”

David Bentall, founder of Vancouver-based Next Step Advisors, which provides advisory services for business families around the world, says when women assume leadership in the family enterprise, they often bring a high level of emotional intelligence that makes it easier to navigate family dynamics and build consensus.

“I do think that generally women have more of a nurturing element to them and they’re more sensitive to other people’s feelings,” he says. “They’re more relational and tend to be more collaborative, and I think those traits are important for building consensus.”

While it’s encouraging to see more family businesses putting female next-gen members in the C-suite, that’s not enough, says Kiran Narang, a senior associate at Next Step Advisors. It’s also important to bring more women into the boardroom.

“Especially when there are women in the leadership or ownership, we try to actively make sure that we recruit board members who are female because that representation matters,” she says. “More than that, these female board members often end up mentoring and guiding the women in leadership.”

Tamara Mull, vice-president of strategy and governance at Buttcon Ltd., a building construction company in Woodbridge, Ont., agrees. When she joined the family business about six years ago, one of the first things she did was create a board of directors, which included Mr. Bentall at Next Step Advisors and two women, each with deep experience in commercial real estate development.

“To have them on our board – two great, very different women – it’s been really wonderful,” says Ms. Mull, a second-generation owner at Buttcon, now led by her brother, Mark Butt. “They’re great role models and they’ve also taken the time to mentor and coach me on big and little things.”

Having formal governance in place was critical to advancing her other goals for the business, says Ms. Mull, whose passion is sustainable cities. With her input, Buttcon has intensified its focus on sustainable projects such as modular buildings and affordable housing and is working more with Indigenous groups.

“I’ve also helped to launch and bring forward our BIM platform,” says Ms. Mull, referring to Buttcon’s visual design teams that use 3D modelling to plan every phase of construction. “That makes us more current and helps us change the culture, because innovation adds to the culture as well.”