Trusted counsel for founders, families and foundation boards carrying responsibility beyond themselves.
Swiss Foundation Law and Governance
Position
Over the years, I have noticed that the most defining decisions arise when responsibilities, each legitimate on their own, begin pulling in different directions.
They rarely arise because knowledge is missing.
A foundation wants to honour its origin while remaining relevant. A board wants to protect stability while allowing something new to emerge. A founder wants to give freedom without losing the essence of what created it.
Those tensions are often the sign of an institution that is alive. The challenge is to navigate them with integrity and understand what today’s choices create for tomorrow’s institution.
The privilege is not ownership. It is being entrusted.
Practice
As a Swiss lawyer specialising in foundation governance, I support founders, families and boards in creating, developing and strengthening foundations built to last.
Founding
From the first questions of purpose and institutional identity to governance, statutes and establishment. I help founders and families create foundations designed not only for the moment of founding, but for the years that follow.
Developing
Foundations evolve. I work with boards when governance, roles, structures or ways of working need to evolve with them, while remaining true to what the institution was created to serve.
Strengthening
Some questions do not fit neatly into a legal, financial or operational category. I support boards at these defining moments, when different responsibilities meet and sound judgement matters.
My role is to bring clarity to the questions that matter.
About
TRUSTED COUNSEL
HANNA BYLAND
I am a Swiss lawyer specialising in foundation law, foundation governance and institutional stewardship.
My perspective comes from working with institutions in different forms of responsibility. I serve on foundation boards and investment committees, support boards at defining moments, and carry executive responsibility for a Swiss entrepreneurship foundation with a 40 year history.
Institutions look different when you are responsible for carrying them. Decisions are no longer theoretical. They influence people, relationships, culture and the institution that will exist years later.
This experience shapes my counsel.
I combine the independence of an external perspective with the understanding of someone who carries that trust myself.
My counsel is personal, while being embedded in the established legal practice of AWG.
