Sasin alumni share hard-won insights on proving yourself, managing expectations, and building lasting legacies in family enterprises
The weight of legacy can be both a blessing and a burden. At Sasin Reconnect 2025, nearly 100 community members gathered to explore one of business’s most delicate challenges: how the next generation succeeds in family enterprises while honoring the past and forging their own path forward.
The August 27 panel, “Succeeding as Successors: Refining Your Own Learnings and Legacy,” brought together three alumni who have navigated this complex terrain firsthand. Their stories reveal universal truths about leadership, family dynamics, and the courage required to step out from established shadows.
The Proving Ground: Earning Your Place
Benja Bencharongkul (EMBA 2023), now Co-CEO of United Information Highway at Benchachinda Group, didn’t start at the top. Despite being the son of Vichai Bencharongkul (EMBA 2012), his journey began with repetitive IT consulting work that left him unfulfilled. “I made a lot of terrible decisions, lost money, and was put under a lot of scrutiny,” Benja recalls of his early years managing a small startup within the group. But those failures became his greatest teachers. “The trial-and-error process taught me lessons that no textbook or consulting framework could.” The privilege of family connection, he learned, came with heightened expectations rather than free passes. “I had to prove that I bring value to the company and not just take time off to go to Sasin,” he explains. Long-term employees watched closely, requiring him to demonstrate that his position was earned through capability, not birthright. Wannasiri Aramwattananont (MBA 2012) faced similar scrutiny as Director of SeaValue & SeaWealth, one of Thailand’s largest seafood manufacturers. Tasked with diversifying from seafood into poultry, she chose to let results speak louder than words. Her strategy: focus on execution, expand into new products, and prove leadership through performance rather than proclamation.The Listening Advantage: When Youth Meets Experience
Voraphol Nithipitigan (EMBA 2022) entered Squid Brand and MegaChef as the youngest member of a Gen X-dominated leadership team. Rather than trying to immediately assert new ideas, he chose a different approach: strategic listening. “When you are young and energetic, you want to do everything at once,” Voraphol observes. “When you are acting too much and not listening, you lose more trust than you gain trust.” Despite having no sales background, he successfully built an in-house sales team—not by declaring what he thought was right, but by demonstrating it through careful performance and relationship-building.Breaking Free from Rigid Structures
Success in family businesses, the panelists discovered, often requires navigating entrenched systems. Both Benja and Wannasiri described working within what they saw as overly dictatorial leadership styles, despite having family support for new ventures. “We want people to make smart decisions, make decisions faster,” Benja explains. “A lot of the culture is embedded by the family members—no one has said it out loud, but everyone has felt it.” The challenge becomes fostering innovation while respecting established hierarchies. Benja felt his company sometimes operated “like a state enterprise rather than a private company,” highlighting the tension between family authority and business agility that many successors face.What They Wish They’d Known
Looking back, the panelists identified key insights that could have accelerated their journeys. Benja wished he had connected with more external professionals earlier, bringing fresh perspectives into the family business ecosystem. “I will never be as good in this business as my parents or uncle, just because I’ve never been through the tough times that they have,” he acknowledges. This humility, rather than limitation, became a source of strength—driving him to seek diverse expertise and collaborative solutions.The Bigger Picture: Values Over Numbers
While financial performance matters, all three leaders emphasized that preserving family unity and core values proves even more critical for long-term success. “I feel what’s even more critical than the numbers we are generating is how do you make sure the family stay together, and not fight,” Benja reflects. “I have my way, you have your way, but in the end, everyone is fighting for the same goal: for the family to succeed.” This perspective—seeing individual approaches as complementary rather than competing—offers a mature framework for managing the inevitable tensions that arise when family and business intersect.Key Takeaways for Next-Generation Leaders
- Earn credibility through results, not titles
- Listen more than you speak, especially early on
- Embrace failure as education—controlled risks teach invaluable lessons
- Seek external perspectives to complement family wisdom
- Focus on family unity as the ultimate success metric
- Demonstrate value consistently to overcome privilege perceptions