As an executive management candidate in 2013, Kelley Dixon had a choice. Join the family business or take a high-flying corporate job. She’d qualified for and completed training in London with a select group of candidates from around the world who’d assembled in the British capital to compete for a handful of managerial posts with a major entertainment company.

Dixon’s father, Dave Nemec, compared his daughter’s experience to a real-life version of The Apprentice. “I used to watch this show called ‘The Apprentice,’” he says. “Everybody’s heard of it. She got to live it.” Out of 800 applicants, Dixon was ...