The courtship is finally over. After decades of advancing your career, years stewarding nonprofits, months of matchmaking, and more networking than you can count, you have finally landed your first seat on a corporate board of directors. The Board has done its due diligence. Now, it’s up to you to prove them right. Receiving your …
Read more “A Seat at the Table: Surviving and Thriving on your First Corporate Board”
When we decided to become parents, my husband and I thought we had a clear idea of what we were signing up for: a roughly 20-year contract with add-on options (graduate education, wedding, grand-parenting, etc.). But as the only child of elderly parents, now in need of parenting themselves, the terms of service have never …
I was appointed to my first two corporate boards on the same day, less than a year into my search. To the casual observer, I must have discovered a magical Hogwarts Sorting Hat for directors — and I’ve since met with many aspiring board members seeking such wizardry. There were no supernatural forces behind my …
Read more “The Magic Matrix: Purposeful Networking to Land Your Board Seat”
“When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? and I say, ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg With nine as the typical size of a board of directors, Justice Ginsburg might …
Read more “Fearless Girl in the Boardroom: Just Getting There Isn’t Enough”
“Serving a nonprofit doesn’t count as real board experience – nonprofit boards only raise money.” I first heard this from an accomplished director who served on multiple Fortune 500 boards. She was supposed to be inspiring participants in Harvard Business School’s Women on Boards program about our prospects for corporate board service. Instead, her comments made my blood …
Read more “Making it Count: Nonprofit Boards as a Means to Corporate Boards”