Professor Sabine Rau works as an independent consultant to international entrepreneurial families across Europe, the USA, Canada, and the Arab world. From 2017 to 2021, she was a partner at PETER MAY Family Business Consulting in Bonn, Germany’s leading advisory firm for family businesses. She holds visiting professorships at ESMT Berlin and the University of Ottawa, Canada, and teaches at the Université de Luxembourg and WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar, Germany. Until early 2017, she was Professor of Entrepreneurship at King’s College London.

Before returning to academia, Professor Rau founded her own business and subsequently joined her family’s enterprise. Her academic career began in 2001 as a Research Fellow at INSEAD. In 2003, she became President of the International Family Enterprise Research Academy (ifera, www.ifera.org), a position she held until 2007. She also serves on several boards as an independent director, including the Supervisory Board of the Sacher Group in Vienna and the Board of Directors of Siegwerk, a hidden champion based in Siegburg, Germany.

Professor Rau has published in leading journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Family Business Review, Journal of Business Research, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Small Business Economics, and Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, among others. She is the author of one of the first textbooks on family businesses, now in its third edition, and serves on the review boards of several academic journ