ABOUT
After nearly a decade serving as major-domo, overseeing more than thirty household staff for one of Canada’s most prominent families, Charles set his sights on starting his own business. In 1996, he founded Charles MacPherson Associates (CMA) and began providing his household-management expertise to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) clients.
In 2009, Charles opened The Charles MacPherson Academy, located in Toronto, Canada, in response to the demand for highly skilled, professionally trained private-service professionals. The Academy has educated and equipped butlers, house managers, housekeepers, and other domestic staff to meet modern-day service expectations.
Today, CMA recruits and places household staff, educates and trains private-service professionals, and consults for HNW and UHNW families on matters related to household management and operations. With this foundation and his keen understanding of clients’ service expectations, Charles has expanded the business into hospitality and customer-service training and advisory.
Over the last two decades, Charles has built a reputation as a global authority in the butler and household-management fields across the private-residential, hospitality, and customer-service sectors worldwide. He has established butler-department standards and trained butlers for Queen Mary 2, the Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai, Aria Resort and Casino Las Vegas, Wynn Macau, and Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces. He has also delivered a number of customer-service improvement initiatives with a wide range of clients, including Louis Vuitton, the Ford Motor Company, the Boston Consulting Group, the Royal Bank of Canada, and Astellas Pharma.
In addition to his responsibilities at CMA, Charles has published four books with Penguin Random House: The Butler Speaks, The Pocket Butler, The Pocket Butler’s Guide to Travel, and The Pocket Butler’s Guide to Good Housekeeping. His first book, The Butler Speaks, is now in its eighth printing. You may also have heard Charles on CBC Radio speaking about butling, manners, and etiquette. Charles served as the ‘Resident Butler’ on The Marilyn Denis Show for its entire thirteen-year run — the number-one-rated national daytime lifestyle television series.
Since 2024, Charles has hosted his own weekly radio programme, Cordially Yours, on SiriusXM channel 167.