The Bell That Still Rings: What the World's Oldest Small Family Business Can Teach America About Leadership and Legacy

In a quiet Italian town called Agnone, bronze still meets fire the same way it did eight centuries ago.

Since 1339, the Pontificia Fonderia Marinelli has cast bells that ring across cathedrals, villages, and nations. Through wars, plagues, and revolutions, this family never closed its doors. Generation after generation, they passed down their craft — not as owners, but as stewards of something sacred.

Among their creations stands one of history’s most enduring symbols: our Liberty Bell. That bell once called our young nation to unity — a reminder that freedom requires responsibility, and that liberty means nothing without continuity.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped listening.

The Crisis We Don’t Hear Anymore

Today, America faces a $12 trillion leadership-succession crisis (U.S. Chamber Foundation, 2023). Millions of small and mid-sized businesses — the backbone of our communities — risk vanishing within a generation. Not for lack of talent, but for lack of systems that prepare and empower successors to carry the torch forward.

We’ve confused leadership with charisma, and succession with paperwork. And beneath that misunderstanding lies a deeper fracture — the legacy of inherited institutional segregation.

The National Academies of Sciences (2023) describe it as “the structural residue of exclusion” that still shapes access to opportunity. The Center for American Progress (Solomon et al., 2020) shows how displacement and inequity continue to choke off intergenerational wealth and leadership mobility. The result is a nation full of capable successors — brilliant, ethical, prepared — who are never invited into the circle. I know, because I was one of them.

From Locked Doors to a Living Vision

When I graduated with my MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship in 2023, I returned to Grand Rapids, Michigan, determined to lead my home state into a new era of shared prosperity. I knocked on doors — universities, corporations, community leaders — offering the best of what education had taught me and the heart of what leadership requires.

For nearly two years, every door stayed closed. No access. No invitation. No one listening.

But in that silence, something else began to take shape.

Out of rejection grew conviction — and the realization that the problem wasn’t mine alone. It was systemic: the same circles of opportunity kept rotating inward while communities and new leaders waited outside the gates. 

That realization became my seed of the Graduate Enterprise Network Foundation (GEN) — a vision born not from privilege, but from perseverance. My conviction was shaped by two Grand Rapids visionaries: Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel — two best friends who refused to quit after their own storm.

In the early days, before Amway, they set sail on a small boat named Elizabeth — the same name I carry. Their voyage nearly ended in tragedy. The boat capsized, leaving them adrift, cold, and uncertain in their rescue. But they survived. And when they returned home, they didn’t just rebuild — they began again.

From that so-called disaster rose one of Michigan’s greatest success stories — one built on faith, friendship, and an unshakable belief that prosperity could be shared. Their love and labor gave rise to Amway, and to a legacy that continues to strengthen families and small businesses to this day. They could have given up. But instead, they kept the bell that was with them on that ill-fated voyage — the same bell that once rang out across their factory floor.

And sometimes I wonder… when they rang that bell in celebration of what they built, if it too was cast by the same Marinelli family in Italy — the ones who forged our Liberty Bell. Because symbols have a way of circling back to those who still believe in them.

Like Rich and Jay, I, too, am steering, Elizabeth moves through uncertain seas — and I will not sink to the bigger ships. The same spirit that pulled them from the waves fuels this mission: that love, labor, and conviction can outlast any storm when the work serves more than oneself.

Learning from 800 Years of Continuity

The Marinelli Foundry has survived eight centuries because it treats succession as a sacred trust, not a transaction. Every bell it casts carries the weight of generations — of memory, mastery, and mission.

They’ve built not just a business, but a living system of leadership continuity:

• Institutional Longevity: Success measured by preservation, not expansion.

• Embedded Purpose: Work tied to community and meaning.

• Intergenerational Design: Leadership planned, not improvised.

They’ve proven what America has forgotten: stewardship, not ambition, sustains freedom.

Rebuilding America’s Rhythm

That is why we built the Graduate Enterprise Network Foundation (GEN) — a startup nonprofit founded to restore the handoff of history.

Legally incorporated in Texas and Michigan, GEN holds its EIN, Certificates of Formation, and Michigan Charitable Solicitation License, with our IRS Form 1023 currently under review for 501(c)(3) status.

In September 2026, we will launch the GENius Path Pilot in Dallas, Texas — deploying MBA and professional-degree talent into small and mid-sized enterprises to strengthen succession pipelines, preserve community legacies, and rebuild the local economies that built America.

This pilot is not another internship.
It is the first step in a new movement — one that measures leadership not by title or prestige, but by:

• Applied impact in real enterprises.

• Contribution to local prosperity.

• Commitment to stewardship and continuity.

The Bell Still Rings

The Marinellis never stopped casting bells.
They have kept a nation’s rhythm alive through eight centuries of change.

That is what we’re trying to do now — not with bronze and fire, but with leadership and faith.

Leadership succession is not a transaction; it is the quiet infrastructure of civilization — the bridge between those who build and those who continue the work.

If an Italian family can preserve its purpose for eight hundred years, America — the nation their bell helped inspire — can learn to listen again.

They made our Liberty Bell. We’re the ones who stopped listening.

Now, in Dallas, I’m ringing the bell again — for continuity, for community, and for every leader who refuses to sink when the storm hits.

References

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2023). The Effects of Structural Racism and Segregation on Higher Education Outcomes.

• Solomon, D., Maxwell, C., & Castro, A. (2020). Systemic Inequality: Displacement, Exclusion, and Segregation.Center for American Progress.

• U.S. Chamber Foundation (2023). The $12 Trillion Succession Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities for Small Business Transition.

• Pontificia Fonderia Marinelli, Agnone, Italy (Italian Ministry of Culture Archives).