Our Team
Amelia Renkert-Thomas
Founder, Consultant
Former President of Ironrock Capital Inc., her family's 5th-generation manufacturing business, former lawyer and counselor to families, businesses and family offices, founding partner of an award-winning consulting group, and author of Engaged Ownership: A Guide for Owners of Family Businesses (Wiley 2015)—Amelia fully appreciates the real challenges enterprising families face.
Amelia’s consulting work fills a void between family dynamics and management consulting. Amelia’s work reduces and manages the conflicts that can be created by structures of ownership, such as voting and non-voting shares, trusts, partnerships, and foundations. Her work on ownership and governance has been referred to as "the missing piece of the puzzle for family businesses."
Amelia works with families and enterprises of all shapes and sizes, from entrepreneurs coping with the consequences of liquidity events to large multigenerational families with highly sophisticated business and investment structures. She helps families to design tailored governance structures, create more effective board structures, form and govern family offices, set up shareholder councils, navigate complex transactions, and make trusts more functional.
Amelia graduated with honors from Yale College and Harvard Law School and holds an LLM in Taxation from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In addition to authoring Engaged Ownership, Amelia created The Engagement Toolkit and has authored articles for numerous family business and family office publications. She is frequently asked to speak on family enterprise topics and hosts More at Stake: The Family Business Podcast. She is Professor of the Practice of Family Business Governance at University of North Carolina’s Kenan Flagler Business School. A director of Ironrock Capital, Inc., Amelia is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Southeast Family Office Forum and of Attorneys for Family Held Enterprises and the Purposeful Planning Institute.
Meredith Thomas Straight
Consulting Associate
Meredith brings her background in organizational development (and her life experience as Amelia’s daughter) to the Renkert Thomas Consulting team. After graduating summa cum laude from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy with a major in Learning and Organizational Change, Meredith spent four years in healthcare before coming home to family business. In addition to supporting Amy in the majority of RTC’s client engagements, Meredith also leads RTC’s next-generation initiatives, planning and executing education and activities for tomorrow’s family enterprise leaders.