The Corporate Director Podcast

In this podcast episode, Cindy Moehring discusses how boards can create a transparent, accountable company culture. Later on, special guest Adam Berger elaborates on what public company boards can learn from the private equity approach to value creation and working with entrepreneurial CEOs.

On this episode, Dr. Anita Sands shares her thoughts on digital transformation—what’s going on and how directors can stay up to speed. With a masters in public policy and management and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics, and as a non-U.S. member on several U.S. boards, Dr. Sands brings a unique perspective from the worlds of science, technology, and directorship. Dr. Sands is a member of the boards of Service Now, Symantec, Pure Storage and she is an advisory board member for Thrive Global and Docusign.

Innovation has long been thought of as crucial to an organization’s success. But, too often, there seems to be little innovation (and diversity) within the organization’s board. On this episode of The Corporate Director podcast, Margaret Whelan shares how boards can rethink value, innovation, growth, and diversity. Margaret is the CEO of Whelan Advisory, and also serves on the boards of the Housing Innovation Alliance, Mattamy Homes, John Burns Real Estate Consulting, and various other non profit boards.

On this episode, Leah Malone joins the show to discuss PwC’s Annual Corporate Directors Survey. The study surveys over 700 US board directors, making it one of the largest public directors surveys in the country. Three-fourths of the directors are from companies with at least $1 billion in revenue. Leah Malone is the Director at PwC’s Governance Insight Center, and author of the study.

In 2018, 17.5% of the world’s largest 2,500 companies experienced CEO turnover. Notably, that number is up 3% from the year before. Even more notably? The top reason for CEO forced turnovers was misconduct. Jennifer Chatman, Professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkely and Independent Director at Simpson Manufacturing Inc., has dedicated her research to demystifying corporate culture.

Interviewing a professional who truly excels in her work is always a positive experience. But we wouldn’t just say that Anastassia Lauterbach is a professional who excels. Really, she’s a champion who inspires. Anastassia is on the boards of EasyJet and Wirecard and on the Advisory Board for Diligent Institute. She’s also the author of The Artificial Imperative, and is CEO and founder of 1AU Ventures Ltd.

Nearly six years ago, Target experienced a major breach of its customer data. Since then, the conversations in boardrooms about cyber risk could not be more different than they used to be. Back then, people were saying, “Why should boards spend time talking about cyber risk?” Nobody says that now. Instead, the conversation is around, “How much time should the board spend talking about cyber risk?” In this episode, we asked Peter Gleason, CEO of NACD (the National Association of Corporate Directors), to share advice for how directors can stay up-to-date on trends in cyber risk—especially with so many body blows to security constantly coming up in the news.

ESG. Environment, social or sustainability, and governance. There are no clear rules and regulations about ESG--no single definition that everyone is supposed to be following. Not only thinking about ESG but also adopting principles that drive ESG in all aspects of business is especially timely and topical right now. We got to interview Clare Wardle, General Counsel and Company Secretary for Coca-Cola European Partners, about her global take on ESG. “Every one of our environmental targets, we're seeing that that's going to make us a better, more sustainable business,” Wardle said.

One of the main problems plaguing modern governance is too much looking backward and not enough looking forward. Another one is quality of information. If boards have to make decisions based on data, it stands to reason that they should get the most accurate and relevant information possible. That’s what Dottie Schindlinger, co-author of Governance in the Digital Age, got to discuss with Susan Forrester, the chair and director of several listed companies, live in Sydney to celebrate the book.

Corporate boards are under pressure to become more diverse - in age, gender, skill set and more. But younger executives already have full plates, and being a corporate director is becoming an increasingly tough job - one that might seem less attractive to younger candidates than in years past. Are corporate boards heading toward a labor crisis? Why is the director role becoming so challenging (and maybe even unappealing)? We recently sat down with Nora Denzel, a Silicon Valley tech executive who serves on the boards of AMD, Talend Software, and Ericsson, about how things are changing in corporate boardrooms and where we’re heading. “The amount of time that I spend now in public board work, it's probably double what I spent 10 years ago,” Nora said. The game is changing, and directors are challenged to keep up - board composition and performance have reached the tipping point.