The Origin Story
The plan was sound. The family was stuck.
That gap — between a good strategy and a family that can't move on it — is the whole reason Schema exists.
Two things were always true at once.
I spent years training to understand families. Then I spent years watching family businesses — and realized the two problems were never separate.
A family enterprise comes to a consultant with a business problem: a succession that won't resolve, a transition nobody can name, a structure that no longer fits. And underneath it, almost always, is thirty years of family history — grief, mistrust, an old conflict that never closed, a parent who can't let go and a child who can't step forward.
The strategist sees the org chart. The therapist sees the wound. Neither one, working alone, can see the thing that's actually happening: that these two systems are generating friction in each other, constantly, in both directions.
It runs both ways.
It's easy to say family dynamics run — or ruin — the business. That's half of it. The other half is the part most people miss: the business itself generates the relational friction. Trust structures, governance requirements, who-signs-what, who-reports-to-whom — these aren't neutral. They press directly on the family.
The family shapes the business
Old grievances, unspoken roles, grief and shame and loyalty — they don't stay home. They show up in the boardroom as stalled decisions and conversations no one will start.
The business shapes the family
Ownership splits, succession timelines, a governance requirement on paper — these reshape relationships at the dinner table. The structure isn't separate from the feeling. It produces it.
Neither a therapist nor an operations consultant could address both sides.
So I built something that does.
Trained to see the family. Built to serve the business.
I'm Savannah Berry Suttle. A former therapist, a serial entrepreneur, and a third-generation family-business member — which, in the family enterprise world, makes me something of a unicorn. I've spent my life inside multigenerational enterprise, and I work with families from the inside of that experience, not the outside of a textbook.
My training in marriage and family therapy (MA, Reformed Theological Seminary) gives me a rigorous lens for how family dynamics ripple through operations — and how operations, governance, and ownership structures ripple right back through the family. My business background is what lets me do something about it: structure, sequence, a roadmap, and the coaching to keep traction and actually finish.
I'm not practicing as a therapist, and this isn't therapy. What I carry from that training is a way of seeing — how systems hold their shape, why people get stuck, what a family is protecting when it can't move. What I pair it with is actual business strategy, applied to a situation most strategists won't touch.
On the credential, plainly. I hold a Master of Arts in Marriage & Family Therapy and Counseling (MAMFT) from Reformed Theological Seminary, and I practiced under licensed supervision for six years while pursuing licensure. I chose not to complete it. When the field made clear that neither an LPC nor an LMFT would fit this work — and could create real confusion and ethical risk for clients — I stepped out of the licensure track on purpose, in favor of clean swim lanes and a practice that is fully, deliberately non-therapeutic. Not a licensed clinician in any state, by choice. That distinction is foundational to how I work.
I didn't start in business. I started in the therapy room.
That's exactly where I learned why therapy wasn't enough. People would come in to work on a relationship, then walk back out to a family business where the conflict was cemented into the operating procedures — the org chart, the trust structure, the governance. I kept watching the same pattern walk through the door.
You can do all the relational work in the world, but if two people are stuck in roles designed for competition and friction, a failure to collaborate isn't a personality flaw or a mood disorder. It's a business design flaw. And therapy — even structural family therapy — is simply not the place to redesign a business.
So I did the responsible thing and referred those families to operations consultants. It didn't work. The ops consultants wouldn't touch the family dynamics, and the families couldn't articulate what actually needed to change. They were stuck in the in-between: a zone where the business problem and the family problem were the same problem, and no single professional was willing or able to stand in it. Most fiduciaries can't sit there either — their seat is too constrained by their obligations.
So in 2016, I built the modality that was missing. Schema sits in that zone with families as an outsider — holding the relational nuance and the cash flow, the communication breakdown and the governance constraint, the grief and the project plan — to co-design a new structure with both the business and the relationships in mind, and then coach them into actually executing it. Because you can't coach yourself when you're the one on the field.
Structure and repair — together, never apart.
Most families who find me don't need a single thing. They need two things at once, and they've usually been told to pick one. I don't ask them to pick.
The structural side
- Succession that's stalled, ambiguous, or quietly contested
- Building a family office, or evolving the one you have
- Governance and decision-making that fits the family you actually are
- Finding the forest for the trees — naming options when no one can see them
- A roadmap with real milestones, and someone to keep traction
The relational side
- Rebuilding trust where it's thinned or broken
- Conversations the family has been avoiding for years
- Moving from contempt to curiosity — about each other, and the situation
- Repair after rupture, estrangement, or cutoff
- Resilience that holds after the engagement ends
What Schema is not.
Knowing what something isn't is often the fastest way to know whether it's for you.
- It's not therapy. The work is grounded in your enterprise — and often runs alongside your other advisors.
- It's not financial advice. I don't manage money or tell you where to put it.
- It's not management consulting. I'm not here to optimize an operation that's running fine — I'm here for when the family side is holding the business side up.
- It's not formal conflict resolution or mediation. I'll facilitate, advocate, and clarify — but toward shared alignment and a common goal, not alliances and not so anyone can take the others to the cleaners.
What it is: structure, strategy, and clarity for a family that feels stuck or disoriented — and wants to come out the other side both more functional and more whole.
The line between what this is and what it isn't matters enough that I've put it in writing. My full practice policies, ethical guidelines, and a plain what-I-do-and-don't-do are published for anyone to read: Practice Policies & Ethics →
Let's see if we're a fit.
Thirty minutes, no cost, no pitch. You tell me what's going on. I'll tell you honestly whether this is the right kind of help — and if it isn't, I'll point you toward what is.
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