Amelia Patel is chief of staff for Lacy Diversified Industries (LDI), the family office of the Lacy family in Indianapolis. She talks about her role at LDI and the growing importance of family education:
What is LDI?
LDI is a hybrid family office and private equity firm. We offer some services to our unit holders, but the day-to-day of our business is investing in companies in middle market manufacturing and logistics — companies that have immature infrastructure that we can come in and systematize.
One of our value levers is talent. We have recent college grads up to senior directors who will go in and work with one of our portfolio companies on a niche project that requires niche skills that the company couldn’t do themselves. We have a team of 14, including a tax department, a corporate development department and the operations talent that we deploy into our operating companies.
That’s our value-add model. We inject talent to strengthen the leadership teams and the operations of these businesses. We take a long-term hold approach — we hold for 10-plus years. That’s why I say we’re not typical private equity.
The wealth of the family office stems from a cardboard box manufacturer that was started back in 1912 in Indianapolis. We’re on fourth-generation leadership, though in the 80s the company was sold and we restructured. Now we operate as a parent company with businesses under our umbrella, and most of those businesses are manufacturing or logistics related.
What does your role as chief of staff encompass?
My main buckets are internal staff management and development, unit holder relations and communication — including family education— and board governance. We manage four boards: our LDI board and three boards for some of our portfolio companies. The largest bucket of my work, which I call the ‘kitchen sink,’ is where all the things that don’t have a home come to live.
How does your family education work connect to family governance?
Our G4 leader is approaching a pivotal milestone, which has prompted discussions about the future of leadership within the family office. At the same time, we are recognizing that G5 is at varying stages of readiness and interest in assuming roles within the organization. This has created an opportunity to thoughtfully plan for the next phase of governance and engagement across generations.
This — along with the evolution of our board — has made family education very important. We have always had aspirations for family education and have had a few successful initiatives, but nothing that would tie a common thread through the generations.
How has the board evolved?
The LDI board has gone through a lot of changes over the years as we’ve worked to find the right balance between meeting the family’s needs and driving the business forward. We’ve tried different setups — sometimes with family members serving as directors, sometimes without, and even experimenting with rotating roles. Each version taught us something valuable.
When I joined in 2021, we were in our final year of having family directors. There was a tension in the family, and I think, at its core, it was about transparency and communication. They want to be involved. They want to know what’s going on — because this is not just an investment to them. This is their family legacy. In addition, a lot of our unit holders depend on liquidity from LDI to support their lifestyle. So, it felt very important to them to have a seat at the table.
At the same time, we realized the board functions best when it’s a space for strategic discussions led by people with specific industry expertise. To bridge the gap, we focused on creating other ways for the family to stay informed and engaged. Now, we do things like regular updates, family calls after every board meeting and a family retreat where everyone can come together, connect and share ideas. This way, we’ve been able to honor the family’s legacy while ensuring the board has the tools it needs to guide us into the future.
How did you get the family’s buy-in for this change?
I think this change was successful for two reasons. The first is our board chair, who has been part of LDI for more than 20 years and was a dear friend of our G3 leader. There is friendship and deep understanding there, and he is part of the legacy of LDI. His guidance — telling the family this was the right move — really went a long way.
The second thing we did was to totally revamp our unit holder outreach cadence. We put in numerous points throughout the year where we would give them information. Some of it was written quarterly reports. We also hold a family unit holder call after every board meeting. And we also implemented a family retreat as a gathering place where they could learn, connect, meet, build relationships.
When I sat down to think about this family retreat, I realized, we can’t just randomly come up with content every year that we think they want to learn about. We need a more organized family education program and curriculum. So, I have been working on implementing that.
