Stephen Smith & Shawn Gorman | 13th Annual Family Business Speaker Series | Full Talk

L.L.Bean started with a rubber boot, a broken promise, and a founder who kept his word anyway. More than 100 years later, it is still privately held, still family owned, and still headquartered in Freeport, Maine. At the 13th Annual Family Business Speaker Series, Shawn Gorman, Executive Chairman and great-great-grandson of L.L. Bean, and Stephen Smith, the company's first outside CEO, share the inside story of how a brand with over a century of history navigated one of the most consequential change agendas in its history. Their talk covers how governance transformed decision-making across five generations of family ownership, how they hired and onboarded L.L.Bean's first non-family CEO, and how the family and leadership team worked together to modernize benefits, overhaul a return policy that had been in place since 1912, and re-energize a brand that had started to lose its edge. This is a rare look inside one of America's most iconic family businesses, told by the two people who led the work. Whether you are navigating a leadership transition, building governance for a multigenerational family business, or trying to evolve a brand without losing its identity, this session delivers hard-won perspective from people who have done it at scale. Presented in partnership by CMA Global. Learn more at https://cmaconsult.com/family-busines... Website: https://cmaconsult.com Facebook:   / cmaglobal.inc   Instagram:   / cmaglobal.inc   LinkedIn:   / cmaglobal