The Instituto da Empresa Familiar, IEF, is a non profit global professional organization dedicated to assist family businesses by promoting and disseminating knowledge and interdisciplinary skills through the provision of opportunities and educational services, information, documentation and research.

Its main purpose is to become a center of reference and multidisciplinary forum for business owners, their families, executives, shareholders, board members and all professionals working for family businesses.

Inspired by the well-succeeded North American experience of the Family Firm Institute, IEF structured itself as a proactive and independent organization. Founded in 1997, it is the first Brazilian institution entirely dedicated to the development and health of family businesses, in a country where the majority of enterprises are family owned or controlled.

IEF welcomes the exchange, cooperation and partnership with similar international organizations as well as any national institutions interested in providing research, information and educational services to all areas related to family business.

The multidisciplinarity is essential for a productive assistance to family businesses, being inherent to the establishment of the organization itself, since family, business and market must coexist in an effective way although they are not always compatible and constantly impact each other.

Therefore, emphasizing its members diversity, IEF prioritizes the exchange among professionals of various areas and the search of interdisciplinary knowledge for better serving family businesses, inspiring new ways and strategies to face their every time more complex problems and challenges.

This complementarity and cooperation among individuals, companies and institutions, in Brazil and abroad, are implemented in order to more and more enrich the knowledge and development of those who work in and for family businesses.

In times of globalization, IEF also see in the internationalization of its members another adding element of great value. Around the world, the majority of enterprises are family businesses. As a global institution, IEF considers this challenge an excellent opportunity to study the diversity of family and business concepts, through the different cultures and how to use them for the re-direction of a successful and productive future.