Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Join Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and guests for conversations about interesting things happening in the Erie community.
Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Supporting family-owned businesses, with Dr. Christopher Harben
Dr. Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, talks with Dr. Christopher Harben, the Toudy Chair of Entrepreneurship and Family Business, about the Center for Family Business and the annual Family Business Conference. Originally recorded on September 15, 2025.
Hello, I'm Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and you are listening to Behrend Talks. My guest today is somebody we've had here before, Dr. Christopher Chris Harben, the 2D chair of Entrepreneurship and Family Business in the Black School of Business. He also is the uh director, the academic director of the Center for Family Business, which is run by the Black School of Business. Welcome back here, Chris.
Christopher Harben:Thanks, Dr. Ford. How are you?
Ralph Ford:I'm doing well. And uh it's good to have you here. I'm gonna, you know, I always do this. This is part of the show as I run through people's background. I feel it's important, you know. You've got a Doctor of Strategic Leadership from Regent University, an MBA with dual concentrations in organizational leadership and international business from the University of Findlay. And uh earned a bachelor's in media communication from the University of Akron. And this interested me a lot, actually. The certificate in emotionally intelligent leadership from Case Western.
Christopher Harben:That was a lot of fun. In fact, I got to meet my my joke with my wife, I say it was my academic man crush, Dr. Richard Boyatzis, who is a uh one of the preeminent thought leaders on emotional intelligence, him and uh another professor from Harvard. When I did my doctoral studies, Boyatzis wrote a lot of the stuff. And he teaches at Case, so I got to be involved in that program. It was a lot of fun.
Ralph Ford:Do you consider yourself an emotionally intelligent leader?
Christopher Harben:Over years of practice, yes. That doesn't mean that I'm perfect, and I think that's one of the tenets of emotional intelligence is you know what you do well and what you don't do well, and you try to avoid those things you don't do well.
Ralph Ford:I mean, there's a ton of evidence that you can be as bright as you can, but if you don't have emotionally intelligent leaders are the ones who end up at the top. Is that fair assessment?
Christopher Harben:I think that's fair. In fact, some of the research that I'm planning right now relative to family businesses is really reacting to the needs for up-and-coming leaders and how we can create a tool to help establish leadership and family businesses kind of pick out who are the best suited people in the organization to be the next gen.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, because there's a lot of emotion. We're gonna get into all of this today, but there's a lot of emotion around family-run businesses, I'm sure.
Christopher Harben:Yes, I think I I often joke that the problem with family business is not the business.
Ralph Ford:That's right, it's the people, right? Right. It's always the people. It's the family. Well, you know, a little bit more, your research focuses on small business strategy, organizational leadership, and uh family business continuation. So, well, let's uh you know, let's jump right in. Uh I always love to start out with this question what's the pathway to Penn State Behrend? How did you end up here?
Christopher Harben:That was really interesting. I was teaching in a program very similar to what I'm teaching here, and they, as what happens in higher ed, um they made some decisions about cutting the program, and I needed to do a search. So I was four hours away and was very fortunate to fit in here. Um, you know, the transition was nice because I went from a D1 school to this school, but that was not a large D1 school. I preferred the small campus environment. I prefer being able to walk around campus and knowing students by name, by face, by seeing them. So the path was, you know, fairly, fairly traditional in that I I had a need, and it just was fortuitous that the need was met here. So I consider myself very lucky, and I'm not saying that because I'm here with you. I've been talking about this. This is now my ninth year here. Um I I like to say that we are the better Penn State campus.
Ralph Ford:Well, I think we've got a lot to offer. It's a really special environment, and I think you just encapsulated a whole lot of that. Well, let's talk about uh, you know, your role as the academic director of the Center for Family Business. This business was this center, excuse me, was launched in 2021. You know, just walk us through this. What does the center do? What's your role there? You know, give us the background.
Christopher Harben:I think it's important to talk about the genesis of the idea. So we had some key people, Greg Filbeck and Tom Hoffman, looking around the region and saying, we're noticing that there are businesses, particularly family businesses, that are getting to a point where they can't sustain themselves from one generation to the next. And a lot of times they were being sold. And the people buying them had no real interest in keeping them in northwest Pennsylvania. So we started this really thinking this is a way that we can help strengthen family businesses so that they can stay. It's an economic argument, really. We want to try to see how do we keep as many of these businesses running strong in northwest Pennsylvania. And then we looked around and said there really isn't anything like this. There was a information desert anywhere from Cleveland to Buffalo to Pittsburgh, there wasn't anything like this. Now, since then, there there is one in Cleveland, but they operate a lot different than us. And there are there are family business centers across the country, but there wasn't anything nearby. So our focus was really to develop a center where we are providing information, providing networking, providing family businesses the opportunity to work with each other so they realize they're not by themselves. A lot of times when you talk to a family business, they will say things that indicate that they believe they're very different than every other family business. But when they really talk to another person, they realize oh, you have the same knucklehead uncle that I do. Oh, we have the same struggle as as you. And this has come up every time we put on a program, every time we bring in a speaker, people feel this initial connection, feel energized, feel like they're a lot more likely to be successful because they don't feel like they're on that island anymore.
Ralph Ford:A lot of it, I think I've been to a number of your programs. And by the way, they're always inspiring, and you're right, they're some of the same themes. I can't say I've been to them all. But one that always strikes me is you've got this question about what role should the different family members have here? And that's often a struggle. Someone's got to perhaps be the chief executive, the CFO. How do you walk people through those really difficult conversations and help them make rational decisions, emotionally intelligent decisions?
Christopher Harben:I think that's one of the reasons I got that certificate, is because when you think about the family business operating model, it is not unlike any other business, except it has the family dynamic wrapped around it, so that complicates things. You know, I was reading again the biography of one of our speakers at the upcoming conference, and she was saying she had no interest in being involved in the family business, but she was involved because it was dinner time conversation all her life. So that's one of the challenges is how do you balance the life of the family versus the life of the business and can you separate them? And sometimes that causes schisms that causes the future generations to not even want to be involved. It is not really a unique problem to just family businesses, too. I want to make this clear, you know, if if you are a regular business, you would benefit from a lot of the stuff we do at the Center for Family Business because a lot of small businesses go through that. Someone starts a small business, they get it to a particular level where their skill sets are no longer helping feed growth. And now you have to get emotionally intelligent enough to recognize I need to add someone else with different sets of skill sets, and that's a tough thing to do sometimes. So that's why you'll see a lot of entrepreneurs fail. They'll get to a certain level, they force themselves to stick to it because gosh darn it, they've got it this far. And I'll get it further, but they don't have the skills.
Ralph Ford:How do you like you know, so you've got, let's, you know, the in your visual there, the family sitting around the dinner table. But how do you bring an external obviously Center for Family Business is one external, but do they ever you encourage them to create boards of directors or advisory boards? I mean, what are the mechanisms you get them to see this?
Christopher Harben:One of the ways is we do it incrementally, first of all, in a very non-threatening way, if we can encourage people to just come and network with other family businesses, that opens the door. Then we would say get involved in peer groups. So we sponsor peer groups through the center where you have members of family businesses getting together every month where it's very informal, not non-threatening, very private. We like to say what happens in peer group stays in peer group because uh people want to be able to feel comfortable. It gets very intimate and it becomes sort of this de facto uh board. I remember sitting in on one where the group was starting to talk about a subject they had planned on talking about, and a member came in a few minutes later and says, I don't know what anyone's talking about, but I need to talk about this. And he was struggling with whether to fire someone. And the group just pivoted and supported him. Those kind of things set the stage for helping people have an open mind to having outside influence, outside advisory. The next step is an advisory board where it is purely just advisory that has no power. You can't hire and fire anybody. But typically we recommend that those advisors come from a variety of different walks of life, different industries. You don't want to create an echo chamber where if you're in manufacturing, you're in a peer group with all manufacturers. There's a benefit to hearing people from the service industry from other places. And then the ultimate level is the fiduciary board, where you actually have a board in place that can help steer the company through rough times. I can't underscore this enough because it is a struggle sometimes for a business, particularly a family business, when they've built it up through the family and they have to get to the point where they're thinking about this, it's really tough to have the thought of giving up some control. So that might be the initial thing. If I have a board, then I no longer have a hundred percent.
Speaker 00:That's correct.
Christopher Harben:But what they have to think about is where the board becomes particularly useful is in the notion of succession planning. What happens if the patriarch or matriarch is running the company and they have a medical issue, which has happened, I mean, more people than you would think that I talked to, that has been the trigger for the transition. Dad died, mom got sick, I wasn't planning on being in the business, but now I have to be. Had there been a board in place, it smooths that transition out. It takes a lot of pressure off the people that own the business. And I think that's an important point, too. Family businesses have to kind of think, you know, bilaterally. I'm an owner and I'm and I'm an operator. You don't have to be both for it to be a family business. And I think more and more family businesses are recognizing I don't have the skill sets to be an operator. I am an owner. I want to maintain the ownership for family legacy for that asset. I'll bring in outside places, and that's where a board helps a lot.
Ralph Ford:Someone else to operate it. What happens in the case, let's say you've got a family, but there's no there's no apparent succession plan. And they they don't want to sell the private equity, but they need to sell it to somebody. Is there some in-between there? Are there way creative ways you can work this out with companies?
Christopher Harben:That's a great question. So we have one of our original members, a company called Onex here in town.
Ralph Ford:Oh, yeah, know them well.
Christopher Harben:Ashley Hoyer was one of the CEO at the time. They transitioned from a family business to an eSOP. Now, an eSOP is a very interesting option that uh it is somewhere in between selling. Uh, and in fact, one of our speakers at the upcoming conference is really going to be talking about this because they transitioned from a family business to an eSop. And I'm not an eSop expert. I will bring in experts, but I won't even pretend to be one. But this is one of the ways where you can gradually transition from the family owning it. So there could be some revenue generated for the family as they're stepping out. They have professional management that comes in and starts running the company, it stays in the area, it largely maintains the culture that's established because the employees are still there. The employees now are owners, so they have a higher level of engagement, higher level of you know, respect for the company because it's their company now, and it is something to at least consider. It's a you know, it's it's not simple. It's one of those things where you would definitely want to have an advisor, and there are professional advisors out there to walk that through. But I've always suggested it as something that people should consider. One of the problems that family businesses have is when the current leaders want to get out, how do they generate any revenue to live the lifestyle they've been used to? Because if I'm acting as CEO, I'm paying myself a salary. But if I'm no longer the CEO and I'm not getting a salary, where's the money coming from? And if I sell it to my kids, do they have the financial resources to be able to provide me a salary for not doing anything while I'm retired? It gets a lot more complicated. And this is the this is the key to why we started the center. To go back to your first question, if I summed it up into one thing, we want to cause family businesses to have questions and conversations before they need to. You know, too often you see a family business get to a trigger point, dad or mom gets sick, um, there is uh some sort of economic catastrophe or something like this where they have to do something, and they've never thought about it before that point. I'd much rather think about it before and never need it than to have to think about it the moment it's happening.
Ralph Ford:And the reality is someday something's going to happen. So it's going to happen one way or another. That's the reality.
Christopher Harben:One of the CEOs uh that is speaking at our conference, she made this comment to me. She goes, I never paid attention to the family business because dad was going to live forever.
Ralph Ford:That's right. Doesn't work that way. No. You only think that's the case. Well, and the other thing about the power of what you're doing is you've got a lot of people involved in the community, so they can reach out to get a lot of advice from experts in the community as well.
Christopher Harben:We have those expert relationships either via sponsor relationships, so formal sponsors of the center, or we just know people. And that's that's what we try to do. We're not a consulting agency. We don't provide direct consulting ourselves. My role as the academic director is to leverage Penn State's resources as best I can. Our director, Jake Jones, his job is to be out there in the community developing new community relationships. We're we're the conduit for a lot of the stuff out there. As I mentioned before, we were in an information desert, at least relative to family businesses. There's always been a lot of resources out there, whether it's all the universities in the area, we're very fortunate to have a lot of universities in the area. The innovation beehive is this really underrated asset for the community that more businesses need to take advantage of. And we're trying to connect people to those things. So we look at ourselves as that conduit as a connector.
Ralph Ford:Now your background is in strategy. You're an expert there. So how does that play in? Do you give a lot of strategic advice? You you know, you focus on strategic planning. How's that factor in?
Christopher Harben:Well, the way I simplify it is strategy is about playing the game with a purpose, right? You can go out there as a kid and go out to an empty field with a ball and just throw a ball around. But once you have a purpose, then there's a method to doing that. And I can help businesses. We put on strategic planning workshops to help businesses think about the first steps. One of the things that I I notice with strategy clients and even some of our members is that when they are thinking about strategy, they're thinking about the tasks to do. What do I need to do? Do I need to introduce a new product? Do I need to go to a new market? Do I need to expand my offerings? Do I go to a new location? And what I help them understand is we might have to go back a few steps. Do you have established values? What's your vision? What's your mission? And a lot of those things have become checkboxes over the years. But when we work with people, we help them understand that those are foundational. And without those, that task is going to be maybe worth it, maybe it will work. You could get lucky, but our businesses don't have the margin for error just to try to get lucky. Strategy is about taking calculated risks and putting your best resources forward.
Ralph Ford:Adapting is necessary. So you mentioned earlier Jacob Jones, Jake Jones, he's relatively new, so you have a co-director model. Tell us a bit about him. I know he couldn't join us here today, and uh how's that work between the two of you working together in this?
Christopher Harben:So originally we didn't have any directors when we started, so I was kind of managing all the roles, but when we brought Jake on, he and I work together, both reporting to the director of the school business. So we have distinct roles. Co-directors, but really he's the director, I'm the academic director. So, you know, Jake will be out there dealing with fundraising. He runs the day-to-day operations, he interacts with the board mostly. We share the role of putting on programming, although I'll say Jake has done an outstanding job. You know, we went from having programming, our goal of having programming once a month, now that Jake's been on, we have more than one program a month at least. Plus, he's he's actively engaged in the community, doing podcasts, you know, with our members, with community leaders. Great. Uh video podcasts. It's just been, we went from an activity level, you know, at a 50% activity level to an 80% activity level relative to this. And it's still really just the two of us running the center.
Ralph Ford:Well, Tell you, one of the things that you know has really very pleasantly surprised me. I mean, I've been involved in the discussion since this was created, is the number of companies and the number of people that have been interested. It's just been astounding, actually.
Christopher Harben:Yeah, I think in especially when you compare us to other such centers. So when we started this, you know, Dr. Filbeck was involved in the center at the University of Toledo, and a lot of this was modeled after the University of Toledo. They have been in existence for 28 years, maybe even more than that. And they have 200 and some members. We've been in existence for five years, and we've got 80. Wow. So our trajectory was really quick, very fast, and I think that's a testament to the fact that there was a need that was being unmet in the marketplace. And I think it's also a testament to the stakeholders that we were able to develop relationships with outside, and we've had a very strong board, too. So we have some very key people on the board that have been very instrumental. Uh, Bill Lillis is the chairman of our board. Philip Katen has been on the board for you know since the beginning. We have several people like that that have been around since the beginning. They give us a lot of good advice. But again, it goes back to uh there was a significant need. Another story I will tell you is that I went to a family business conference in Sacramento that was put on by a regional Center for Family Business out there. They had 75 members, and they put on a two-day conference, and you know they had been in existence for over 20 years as well. So for us to do this, we're not the size of Sacramento. You know, we don't have that kind of capital region. That that's the capital region of California that they call that. We don't have that, but we're still getting that number of membership.
Ralph Ford:Well, can you, without naming names, can you confidently say that uh you know there are businesses that are in existence today that might not have been if the if the center didn't exist, or is it quite that black and white?
Christopher Harben:I don't know. I don't think I don't think we have had any businesses that have joined that were in peril that were like that. Um but I think it's safe to say that because of some of the programming we have, we have businesses that are better positioned to have greater longevity than they would have. Again, we go back to the mantra of our center.
Ralph Ford:Fair enough.
Christopher Harben:Force you to ask those questions before you have to.
Ralph Ford:Now we're an academic institution, obviously. We've got a lot of faculty and students. Are there faculty involved? Are are students involved in the center?
Christopher Harben:We are more transitioning into that. That is really my role. And because until we brought Jake on, I didn't have as much time as I would like to have done that. But Jake's been here now a year, and this is transitioning. The conference we have coming up, since it's in October, we have a lot of students involved, we have a lot of faculty involved as participants. I think this is going to be a good opportunity for them to experience what the center is. Now we do have students involved with members. So in my strategy class, I bring in companies each semester where students work on a what I call a live case project. They take on a company as a client. All those companies for the last two years have been members of the Center for Family Business. So these students are getting exposed to family businesses that way. Um we have faculty that put on programs for through the center. So I'm reaching out and utilizing those resources within Penn State Behrend's world to help, you know, connect with our members.
Ralph Ford:Well, you have referred several times to the annual conference. It's coming up here soon. And uh, why don't you tell us about uh the annual conference, October 8th and 9th, I believe, is coming up.
Christopher Harben:Right. The 8th, we kick it off with a social event here on campus at the Metzger Alumni Center. This is a social event that gives people an opportunity to meet speakers and network. But the big event is October 9th at the Bayfront. We have four keynote speakers throughout the day. It is an outstanding opportunity for people to meet and interact with CEOs of well-known companies that have gone through some form of succession. The theme this year is the succession. It's a little bit tongue-in-cheek because it's the second year, so it's succeeding our first year. But each of these speakers have had some particular expertise and a different experience with succession. The first one's Gutman Energy. So Joe Luco is a former CFO of Giant Eagle, and he went to Gutman Energy as a CFO there, and now he's the CEO, and he led the transition for Gutman Holdings to become an eSOP from a more than 90-year-old family business. He's got a lot of really granular experience with if you're thinking of this option, here's some things you should think about. Here's some things we went through. His keynote by itself would be valuable because if anyone's thinking about what do I do sometime in the future, and they want to understand maybe eSOP is one of those considerations, this would be a great one. Our second keynote is a Penn State grad. Uh, his name is Bradley Frank. He's really a triple threat. He's an accountant, he's a CPA, he's an entrepreneur. He wrote a best-selling book called The Succession Solution. It's a guide for businesses going through succession. He now advises companies on succession planning. He's another, it's a great kind of non-threatening way to listen to an expert provide advice without having to hire them. And the thing we look at with having Brad here is that Brad's talk will actually make our members better clients for the local advisors that exist. So if you have an accountant relationship, you have an attorney relationship, listening to Brad is going to help you be a better client for those people. And the first hundred people that register, and we're getting close, first hundred people that register get a copy of his book. The third keynote speaker I'm excited about. I've known Sherry for years. Um Sherry runs, Sherry Brumbaugh runs an Ohio-based trucking company called Garner Trucking. If anyone's been on Route 90, they've seen the trucks. They're black trucks with big red letters, says Garner. This is a regional but nationally known trucking company. They constantly are being awarded, uh, I think they're in the Hall of Fame for best fleets to drive for, which means you have to win that award 10 years in a row to become a Hall of Famer, and they've been in a Hall of Fame three years now. So it's an outstanding story. And she started off as a music teacher. She was a band director, and she was the one sitting around the family table saying, have no interest in being in dad's business, dad's gonna live forever. And then her dad got sick, and her mom said, You know, Sherry, I think you can do this, and she's transitioning in that role. Second generation CEO in a business that's primarily male. So she's got a great, great story to tell. And then finally, and I just realized this the other day, this has a Pennsylvania connection, even though it's an Ohio company. If anyone's familiar with Northeast Ohio Cleveland area, they're familiar with Malley's Chocolates. Well, I didn't realize that Malley's Chocolates got it traced its roots to Meadville. Because the original Mike Malley worked at a chocolate store in Meadville before he ended up growing up and moved to Lakewood, Ohio, bought a store for $500, rented a store for $500, and started what's now Malley's Chocolates with over 18 stores at a 60,000 square foot facility right by the airport. So he and he's the third generation chocolatier. He's a former CEO. They just transitioned away from having a family member CEO. They have a non-family member CEO. And he will talk about their plans for the future as well as with regard to succession.
Ralph Ford:It's a great lineup of speakers. So if people are interested, how do they find out more?
Christopher Harben:The easiest way, you go to our website, family business, all one word, familybusiness.psu.edu, or they can email me directly, CLH612 at psu.edu. G
Ralph Ford:And uh, you know, before we finish up, we're getting close here. I want to talk a bit about AI. We hear about it all the time, and you know, if properly used, as we said earlier before we started this discussion, it can be a real force multiplier. Are small small businesses asking about this? Are you involved? Tell us about this.
Christopher Harben:I'm not directly involved other than in my own world. I'm starting to incorporate it a lot more. I would consider myself a late adopter to it. I was suspicious of it at first, but now I'm starting to realize just the amount of efficiency it can create. And it's been something that's been a topic on the minds of our members. So a couple months ago, we had a great AI presentation by one of our faculty here, two of our members. It's we brought in uh community experts, created this great discussion because I think it has more impact to small businesses than small businesses realize. I think right now there's a lot of perspective out there that this is what the big companies are doing. They're going to institute it into their call centers, they're going to do in quoting systems. But I was talking to a small business the other day where she is a one or two, three people in her office, and she's looking at it. Can it help me with marketing? You know, you can create AI chatbots on the website, and she can get quotes from that, it can take that data and start creating media marketing campaigns. So I think right now, more and more of our members, because we don't have huge business size members, we are really the small to middle size uh center, and I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
Ralph Ford:So much. And I you know, another area to think about is it's a strategic thought partner, right? You you're the strategic leader, but it can challenge, you know, you can have it examine your strategic plan. It can ask you really critical questions. There's so much that it's it's more than asking it to help you write uh a document and an email, but really, you know, have it challenge your thinking.
Christopher Harben:So in my strategy class, that's one of the things I'm having students do. They're doing uh a case assessment as is typical at this level, and I'm having them use AI to vet their recommendations, to kind of not you're not using it to write the case, you're having AI to check your work or say, hey, have you thought about this? Here's another thing that's worked. Even in the book I'm writing on strategy, I'm putting uh a section in there where saying, okay, if you go through this section, use AI to check your work. Part of the thing is, you know, if we think about it outside the of academia, businesses don't have a whole lot of time to devote to this. This is one of the reasons that they don't put as much effort into strategic planning as they should. But if they can utilize AI, they make the work they're putting in a lot more efficient.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, it's it can really make a lot of difference if you use it uh very effectively and strategically. Well, let me switch to uh you mentioned your class, so that makes me think. Tell us a little bit about your teaching. What's your philosophy of teaching? What do you like to do in the classroom?
Christopher Harben:So I like to believe I was hired here just because I am an applications expert. So I am not someone that produces a lot of research, but what I do is I take the research that's out there and help students apply it to real world situations. My my thinking is in, you know, in the academic world, it's a balance between creating new knowledge and then applying that knowledge. I'm the application guy. So when you come into my classroom, we're gonna do some typical academic things, case analysis, but that case analysis leads to real-world current level discussions. I'm talking about clients that I have, I'm talking about members of our center, I'm comparing it to current business issues, whether it's the tariff issues, whether it's you know, strategy relative to AI, how does this affect strategy? And then getting other actual businesses involved, students really, really love being able to work with a living, breathing business. You know, it's a lot different than the theoretical. So mine is less on the theoretical, more on the practical. Mine is the capstone class. It's one of the last things they do before they graduate. So my philosophy to them is my job is to help you differentiate yourself from all the other students out there. As business students, they're not rare, they're not unique. You can fall out of a building on Peach Street and you're gonna hit three other business majors on the way down. So, what sets you apart? And I believe with my Teaching is what sets my students apart is they've been there, done that more than others have because of the way we run this class.
Ralph Ford:Well, I think it's the whole idea behind our open lab philosophy here. And uh I'll just say right on, I'm I'm with you, and in fact, I'm teaching a capstone class this semester with student projects. And what we hear across the board is that capstone experience is so important in their future career. Well, let's uh let's uh switch to your long-term vision for the Center for Family Business. What would you like to see it look like five, ten years from now?
Christopher Harben:Well, that's that's fascinating because we're just having these discussions because frankly, when you're a growing organization, it's sometimes hard to be looking 10 years down the road, five years down the road because you're focused on getting the growth now. We are finally at critical mass now where we're refining what we're doing. We're refining, we have some programming that's always happening every year. We plan to have the conference every year. We have a leadership development program, two versions of that every year. We have a succession planning workshop every year, and we do a half-day event in May every year. So those are sort of our foundational programs, and this allows us to build around that. I think what we're looking ultimately is to be so influential and so um well done that this spreads across other campuses, starting to interact more with other Penn State campuses, starting to be a resource for other Penn State campuses, using those resources for the benefit of our members. There isn't another one like this in the Penn State system. No, there isn't. So they're watching us just as much as as anything. Um, and I think we've been we've been living up to a lot of the expectations, but I think that's the long-term vision. It becomes more integral to the entire Commonwealth campus system rather than just residing here and only focusing on Behrend.
Ralph Ford:Well, that's a great vision, and this has been a wonderful conversation. Have learned a lot. I know that uh our listeners are going to get a lot out of this one. Uh Chris, uh, this has been great. I've been today's discussion has been with uh Dr. Chris Harben, who is the uh academic director of the Center for Family Business here at Penn State Behrend. Fascinating conversation. Thank you for being here today.
Christopher Harben:Thank you, Ralph.
Ralph Ford:Take care.