“Making a difference in other people’s lives is at the core of my life’s purpose. Supporting the continuity of family enterprises allows me to have an impact in the lives not only of the shareholder families but also of thousands of families that derive their livelihood from them“.
Fernanda Jaramillo is a seasoned advisor supporting continuity for enterprising families across Central and South America. At LGA, she supports shareholder families in pivotal moments of generational transition – including crafting governance frameworks, developing family and shareholder agreements, designing next-generation education programs, and guiding leadership transitions in the business and the governance structures.
Prior to joining LGA, Fernanda served as CEO of a retail family business, where she led a large-scale transformation: shifting from family management to a professional leadership team; instituting a formal board with independent directors; and overseeing a successful generational leadership handover eight years later. Earlier in her career, she advised Latin American family-owned enterprises from a New York-based investment bank, where she supported strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, capital raising and shareholder agreements.
Fernanda has a presence in the thought-leadership space, complementing her advisory work. Her publications include the co-authored chapter “Antecedents to Entrepreneurship”, in the landmark text “Family Entrepreneurship” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. She is also author of articles such as “Entrepreneurship as a Family Legacy” (Legado Magazine, 2021) and co-author of “Beyond the Boardroom: A 360 View of the Board Chair in a Family Enterprise” (LGA.global, 2025).
Fernanda is co-founder and co-host of the LGA Lighthouse Español podcast, where she played a role interviewing global experts, family leaders, colleagues and academics on governance, succession, and transgenerational entrepreneurship. Through these conversations, she bridges practice and research, highlighting real-world stories and lessons that inspire family enterprises to thrive across generations.
As a frequent lecturer and keynote speaker, Fernanda appears at family-business conferences globally and is regularly engaged by universities and executive programs. She has served as a visiting teacher in governance and family-enterprise programs at Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University) and at programs in Mexico (e.g., EGADE/TEC de Monterrey). In Latin America, she is co-founder and co-director of the family-governance program developed by LGA in partnership with ESE Business School for Latin-American enterprising families, delivered annually in New York.
Fernanda also serves on multiple corporate boards and board committees. She is an independent board member in both the United States and Colombia, with committee roles in succession and family-talent oversight (board committees for succession/family talent development), reflecting her dual practitioner-and-governance-advisor perspective.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master’s degree in Family Advisory from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Fernanda is Colombian, speaks Spanish, English and Portuguese, and is based in Colombia, operating primarily across Latin America and the United States.
