Estate planning is often reduced to documents and structures, but the families who navigate it best start somewhere deeper: their values. Join Genus Capital Management for a live session on values-based estate planning, exploring how a family’s values and intentions should shape the legal and financial structures they put in place — and how to keep beneficiaries, communication, and trust at the center of the plan.
Speakers
Grant Conroy
Portfolio Manager, Partner
As a portfolio manager, I work with institutions, individuals, and families.
I have a long history of being dedicated to stay ahead of the markets having started my career in 1996, covering some of the world’s largest asset managers. I continue this market journey and seek to add value on a more personal basis.
As a qualified Family Enterprise Advisor, I am versed in the complexities that can come with family wealth. This can range from how to prepare and educate the next generation and communicating legacy intentions to protecting family unity.
My own values include equality, learning, and integrity.
Outside of work, I am the chief “dad joke” teller in our household and serve on two not-for-profit boards.
Steve Parr
Founder, Lawyer
Parr Business Law
Steve Parr is the founder of Parr Business Law, a Vancouver-based firm focused on helping business owners and families protect what they’ve built and plan thoughtfully for the people they’ll eventually leave it to.
Steve’s work sits at the intersection of estate planning, business ownership and legacy. He is particularly interested in making estate planning more understandable, more human, and more relevant to entrepreneurs and families whose lives and assets don’t fit neatly into a standard will.
An entrepreneur at heart, Steve founded and sold a vacation rental company before launching Parr Business Law in 2017. He earned his law degree from the University of Victoria in 2014 and also holds a B.A. in Women’s Studies. He is a Trust and Estate Practitioner (TEP) and Certified Executor Advisor (CEA).
Outside the office, Steve is usually learning something new, travelling, hiking BC’s incredible mountains, playing pickleball, hockey or dancing up a storm. Steve has also led personal development workshops in Vancouver for over a decade and founded a community to support male entrepreneurs.
Underlying both his work and his life is a recurring question: What are you building this for?
Nicole Garton
President and General Counsel
Heritage Trust Company Inc.
Nicole Garton is President and General Counsel of Heritage Trust Company Inc., an independent trust company regulated by the BC Financial Services Authority, which she co-founded with Brian Dougherty in 2018. Heritage Trust acts as executor, trustee, and attorney under power of attorney, with particular expertise in complex estates, family conflict, operating businesses, and beneficiaries who require additional care or oversight.
Called to the bar of British Columbia in 2001, Nicole has 25 years of experience in estates, trusts, family enterprise, and dispute resolution. She is recognized in The Best Lawyers in Canada™ for Trusts and Estates and Family Law and is a Trust and Estate Practitioner, Chartered Mediator, and Family Enterprise Advisor. She is also a Past Chair of the Canadian Bar Association Wills and Trusts Subsection (Vancouver).
Nicole is the author of The Canadian Executor’s Guide, Before It’s Too Late: The Estate Organizer for Canadians, Harnessing Conflict: How Family Businesses Can Survive and Thrive, and Family Offices in Canada. Through the Your Estate Matters podcast and the Canadian Estate Club, she provides Canadians with clear, practical education about estate planning and administration.
Nicole holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Laws from Osgoode Hall Law School, with a focus on preventing and managing conflict in family businesses. She is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and the Estate Planning Councils of Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
