---
id: "entity-ghsmart-d122"
type: "entity"
source_timestamps: ["Author Bios"]
tags: ["consultancy", "authors"]
related: ["entity-samantha-hellauer", "entity-sanja-kos", "entity-julie-vermoote", "entity-sapna-sadarangani-werner", "entity-bj-wright"]
entityType: "organization"
canonicalName: "ghSMART"
aliases: []
sources: ["tail2"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail2"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-tail-122-leading-after-founder"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/01/leading-after-the-founder"
sourceTitle: "Leading After the Founder"
---
# ghSMART

A leadership advisory and assessment consultancy where all five authors of "Leading After the Founder" work as principals or partners: [[entity-samantha-hellauer]], [[entity-sanja-kos]], [[entity-julie-vermoote]], [[entity-sapna-sadarangani-werner]], and [[entity-bj-wright]]. The firm advises investment firms and corporations on executive transitions and private-equity value creation.

ghSMART is the source's institutional vantage point: the frameworks in this vault — [[framework-founder-role-archetypes]], [[framework-successor-survival-traits]], and [[framework-four-big-mistakes]] — reflect the firm's advisory practice with founder-led and PE-backed companies. This also frames a key evidentiary caveat: the 2–3x statistic in [[claim-higher-failure-rate]] is advisory synthesis rather than a published academic dataset.


## Related across articles
- [[entity-ghsmart-d120]]