"Wait, You Can Do That?" A Founder-Director Conversation About Board Reality
Sometimes the most valuable conversations start in unexpected ways. After publishing my recent series on board governance, I discovered something fascinating: Micki Seibel had been writing about the exact same topic from the other side of the table. While I was sharing lessons learned as a founder, she was documenting insights from her experience as an independent director - all while taking Wharton's Corporate Governance program.
What caught my attention wasn't just the parallel timing. It was her unique perspective: before becoming a director herself, she'd been attending board meetings at six different startups. Even with all that operational experience, she still felt like "a fish out of water" in her first board seat.
That revelation highlighted something crucial: If seasoned operators struggle with the management-to-governance transition, what chance do first-time founders have?
Micki and I recorded a conversation that explores exactly what founders need to know about boards - not theoretical frameworks, but practical reality from both sides of the table. We dive into:
The critical difference between management and governance
How to actually find independent directors
What founders get wrong about board construction
Real talk about power dynamics and alignment
Plus, Micki shares specific insights from her Wharton coursework that most founders never hear about.
About Micki
Micki Seibel serves as an independent director for early-stage companies at the intersection of agriculture and technology. Previously, she built products at multiple different Silicon Valley companies including Intel, eBay, Netscape, and more, before being part of the management team at six different startups. Most recently she worked as Chief Product & Technology Officer at Unfold Bio, an agtech startup she cofounded. She brings a unique perspective of having been both an operator in board meetings and now a director helping guide companies.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
Micki: One of the points that I think is relevant to make, especially if someone's going to take the time to watch and read, is I feel like I've been on the management team of six startup companies, and with all of them I've had the opportunity to participate in board meetings. Executive management gets asked to come.
And the first time I was on a board I felt like, huh, my role is different but I'm not really sure how. I've been in the boardroom on six other companies. I'm in the boardroom on this seventh company. But I felt like a little bit like a fish out of water. Which is why I went and took the executive education class from Wharton. And it was just the first of six modules. The first module was "what is governance?"
And it was so eye-opening, like, oh, there are actual legal duties that you have, you need to be aware of. It was, "Here's the frame of how governance is not management." Your job is not to manage the company, it's to oversee it and guide it. And you've got certain legal duties with respect to that like being a fiduciary. And it was eye-opening. So even if you've been in the boardroom as management, that's not governance. There's a whole set that you still need to learn.
The Management-Governance Gap
Paul: Tell me a little bit about yourself, Micki. Who are you and what were these startups that you've worked with and how did you find yourself in that position?
Micki: My background is in Silicon Valley tech. I spent the first few years of my career in large companies whose names you've definitely heard of, and then decided I wanted to be more entrepreneurial and was on the initial management teams of six different startup companies, usually in some form of VP of Product or Chief Product Officer. And now I specialize more in ag tech and climate tech. The last company that I was on the management team of was an ag tech company called Unfold Bio.
Through that experience I've built a great network and some expertise at this intersection of hardware, software, digital technologies, and agriculture. And that's how I was asked to be on my first board as an independent director for an early stage biotech company that was developing biological products for the ag tech space.
Paul: Tell me more about what you were finding as you realized the difference between management and governance. What does that actually mean in practice?
Micki: Well, I think if all of your experience in the boardroom is being there as a member of management, you've developed this skill set and expertise and comfort with how to run a company, whatever that functional expertise is. But when you're on the board, you're removed from running the company. You're not management. It is your job to do two things. One is provide strategic guidance and the second is to provide monitoring and oversight to the management.
Because it is your job to first say, okay, let's provide strategic guidance, make sure the company is going down the right path, has the right vision, and be very critical of the kinds of strategies that management is presenting to you. Your job is to poke holes, ask questions, think about the risks and probe on those risks. And then in the other duty of monitoring, it's also to make sure, is this the right management running the team? Primarily your job is to hire and fire or replace a CEO if the right management isn't in place.
And that's very different from being in management. And sitting in my first board meetings, I kind of felt a little bit like a fish out of water because there were so many instances where I could say, oh well, if I were the head of product in this situation, this is what I would do. But that's not my job.
Building Boards That Help vs. Hinder
Paul: What would you say to a first time founder or somebody who - like myself when I first started Nori - we did not have a board of directors and I had intended that we go this totally different route. I wanted to decentralize and all of that, which is a sort of unique and different story. But a lot of it for me was I didn't want to work for anyone. I started a business because I don't like working for other people and I wanted to be in control, in the decider's seat. And so I had this notion of like, I don't really want to be reporting to a board. And I would think about - I guess there's disagreement out there among does the CEO work for the board or not? So what would you say to a founder who's skeptical of that, who thinks they're starting this business because they know what they want to do, they don't want to be reporting to some muckety muck who doesn't know the nuts and bolts?
Micki: Well, I would say if you don't want to be reporting to a muckety muck, then you should found a company that is a sole proprietorship and be done with it. You're never going to take outside money from other people and run your sole proprietorship. And if you approach the relationship of your board as they're my overseers and my overlords and my boss and I'm reporting to them, then you're not approaching it the right way because it really should be a collaboration.
And if you really truly want to build a company that is bigger than you, which may not always be the case, and there are plenty of even public company examples of founders who are CEOs and chairpeople of the board and were ousted from their own companies and that's not really what they wanted. But I would say you should be approaching your board construction as this is a team that can have your back, the best interests of the company are in their best interest as well.
And as particularly tech founders, I think your ultimate goal is that you're trying to build an organization that is bigger than just you and you can't do that alone. And so that board, having a good, well functioning board is going to be imperative to helping you navigate all the ups and downs that you're going to have in the company. Because you can't possibly know everything that there is to know of every function and risk that your company is going to face. And that's exactly the role that a board will help you with.
The Art of Board Construction
Paul: Yes, and I've definitely come to agree with that. You use the phrase board construction. And something that I was really trying to emphasize in my writing was being intentional about this. Tell me what you think about how to go about doing that, or what should founders be considering as they are constructing their board?
Because I will say for me, I had the experience of, I sort of fell backwards into it and I felt like the board just kind of happened to me and I didn't take the bull by the horns. And I remember having a conversation with an experienced CEO one time when I was asking for advice on how to better manage my board.
And he was talking about how he was very intentional about which investor he let on the board and then also how he wanted a new option grant or a bonus or something like that, which seemed reasonable given the circumstances. And as he was describing that in my head, I was thinking, wait, you can just do that? Like you can just tell them, this is what I need and negotiate in that way.
And so I was approaching it from a very, maybe this is my own pathology, but I was approaching the board from this sort of like, they are senior to me and I am junior and I just let it happen to me. My locus of control was outward and external. So thinking about the opposite of that, what should a founder be doing in terms of thinking about designing and putting that board together?
Micki: Yeah, that's a really great question. And especially in the current funding environment that we're in, you're an entrepreneur raising money. The negotiation is definitely right now in favor of potential investors. And a lot of the terms that they're going to negotiate for include things that give them control on the board. So I think companies that have thought about this going in are much better positioned to navigate those difficult times.
One thing I would say, and I think you touched on this in your writing as well, which is get an independent board director from the get go. You incorporate your company, you have to, if you've incorporated as a corporation, you have to have a board. Usually that's the original founder, CEO and maybe a co-founder that are the board. That's an excellent time to bring in a third, which is an independent director.
Various ways to think about this are to think about what are all the executive leadership skills that you need in your company that you and your co-founders might be lacking? Maybe it's business acumen and business development. Maybe it's some sort of technical expertise or a functional expertise like finance and legal. And that's a great skills gap to approach getting an independent director to help fill. So you're looking to really have the full set of skills around the table to help you build the company.
And an independent director from the beginning can help fill that. And I think the article that you wrote about very specific provisions to include in your articles of incorporation was such great actionable advice.
Paul: Oh, good.
Micki: I would refer any entrepreneur to that writing because there are things that you can do when you're setting up the company in your articles of incorporation to ensure that you get an independent director from the beginning and have parity. Every time you add an investor to the board, you get the option to add another independent that is mutually agreeable to everybody on the board.
Paul: Right. The reason that we're talking and having this conversation is because I started publishing these pieces and they were sort of me just kind of exploring out loud what I thought would be better. And a lot of these things I don't really know from experience. And as I got further into the writing, I was starting to caveat it with, I think this is what would be best. But I haven't tried this myself. We started talking because you found me after I published one of those pieces.
And then I went and looked at your LinkedIn and you had written some very similarly minded articles as well. And that was because you were going through a course at Wharton School about this. So can you talk a little bit about what that was and why did you do that? Actually, that's, I think the most interesting question.
Learning Real Governance
Micki: Yeah, I had just gotten my second board director position also in an early stage ag tech company working on robotics and agriculture. And I just felt like after my first board experience, I had a really good mentor on the first board who was also an independent director and was chairman of the board. And a lot of previous board experience to help coach behind the scenes. But I felt like I really want to come into this confident and being a really good board member, so understanding that there's the difference between governance and management.
It was like I would feel more confident myself if I just took a class on corporate governance. And it just so happened that Wharton was offering an executive education class that was starting in a reasonable timeframe. So I signed up for it, out of pocket. I paid whatever, a couple thousand dollars. Like, I'm just curious. I want to learn. And it was such a great experience. One because you have a global cohort of other students that you get the opportunity to network with and interact with during breakout sessions and live sessions.
And I just found the whole class eye opening on what exactly my duties are, how to think about them and approach them. And so many good case studies, they all came from public companies. And there's definitely a difference with privately held companies that are venture backed versus some of the best practices of public companies. But it definitely shows a roadmap of where a company's governance needs to get to, to one day be a public company. So it was just a really good grounding.
And if anything, I learned a lot and it gave me more confidence being a board director in the boardroom, certainly. And I would certainly recommend it even if you're not yourself a board director, but you happen to be on the management team and end up in board meetings.
The Hidden Research on Board Dynamics
Paul: A couple things from that, as we've been talking, as you and I have had more conversations, I've been asking you questions about this course and you've shared a bunch of great resources with me, a lot of podcasts and things like that. But I guess one of the things I found sort of curious is how little or how few resources there actually are that talk about this. And you were sharing an interesting finding around board diversity and some studies that have been done, I think at HBR about that. Can you talk about that? Because there was actually interesting stuff in there that I hadn't heard before and was surprised by.
Micki: Sure, yeah, the case studies were amazing because there have been case studies written, but they seem - I don't know. When I start a company, the last thing I do is go out and search for academic papers on running a business. So I think it isn't so accessible to most people starting companies. One of the insights that I got there was a module on how to build diversity on your board. And I know DEI has become this hot topic. And the way that this course was talking about diversity is diversity of thought.
And there are lots of different ways to look at diversity, whether that's diverse life experience based on personal traits or socioeconomic backgrounds or geographies or functional skills. And one of the things that Harvard Business Review published a few years ago was that do diverse boards perform better? All of the research is kind of mixed, but what they dug into in their interviews with board directors is that boards that did have diversity of thought, the side effect was that the board directors came more prepared to board meetings.
When you have to go to a meeting where you know that all the people around the table are gender diverse, ethnically diverse, functionally background diverse, I come from product, but if somebody else comes from legal, I need to take some time to be thoughtful about what I'm presenting and the questions I'm asking, knowing that my background and my point of view are different. And when you can cultivate a culture with that where diversity of thought is valued, those boards perform better. Their companies have better market outcomes.
Paul: That was the thing that I found so interesting, especially around the preparation, because I think a lot of founders have had the experience of, like, you go through all this work to prepare your board decks and then you share them, even a week in advance, and you show up at the board meeting and nobody's read it and they're not prepared for that. And then the other problem, especially one that I found myself running into, is a lack of collaboration. Like, it's not having that space for creativity.
So is there anything other than actually picking people like that? What do you think should be done in terms of managing the board to foster that kind of collaborative environment where there is going to be creative problem solving going on?
Micki: Wow, great question. I would also like to hear what you think some of the things that as CEO, you did to cultivate that on your board? I would say, one, you have to be thoughtful about making sure that everybody has space to disagree and that you want to dig in in the board meetings on that disagreement because nobody should feel like they have to be quiet or not ask any question.
You also need to be thoughtful about how you onboard new board members. One of the things I can't remember if it was through the course or if it was through other reading or talking to other people - a piece of good advice that I found was when you have a new board director, pair them with somebody who's been on the board longer and have them do some one on ones in advance of the first couple of board meetings.
They get some of the history and it gives them an opportunity to build a relationship and a rapport with another board director. And you need to encourage those conversations, those board members to build those relationships outside of the board meetings. And another great practice that I've seen on the two boards that I've been on, the CEOs have done great jobs of having one on ones with each of the board members outside of board meetings. And that helps build a rapport between the entrepreneur and their board.
But I think also board members doing that with each other is helpful.
Creating True Collaboration
Paul: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that. That was something that I didn't do very well with my board. I did have one on one meetings with the board members, but I treated them or they felt to me sort of like just status updates and I didn't utilize them or think about them as opportunities to really workshop stuff. And maybe that was just the composition of my board.
And looking back, if I had taken a much more intentional direction with the board construction, I think things might have been different. You asked me about how I tried to foster creative collaboration. I sort of struggle with that in a couple different ways. I mean in a meeting with my leadership executive team, I will often sort of hang back and want to prompt discussion among others before I kind of come in with my interpretation of what I've been hearing.
And then ultimately my, if not decision, my suggested decision and wait for feedback on that. But with the board I felt like I couldn't really do that in that way. And I also had another thing that I only sort of touched on in one of my articles and we haven't talked about yet, is board observers and other people in the room. And I had a lot of observers on my board, so I had maybe even more observers than directors. And that's because Nori had a lot of strategics investing and so I thought it was useful, I found it useful to get their perspectives from the corporate lens of how they're seeing the industry and that sort of thing.
But the conversations were almost too open ended at that point. And because I hadn't spent the time workshopping stuff individually with directors, we were - it's sort of like, you know, the trope about how a trial lawyer doesn't ask a question without already knowing what the answer is going to be. And I hadn't done that kind of preparation.
So that's something that I would definitely change and do differently next time. And I found that our meetings actually were difficult to get to decisions because there were so many voices. A couple of the things that I tried to do was I had read some articles and advice around how to structure the meetings and how to structure the agenda.
And so every board meeting you always have the formalities of things that you have to do around approving the minutes and approving new option grants for employees and that sort of thing. And I shoved all of that to the end. I think a lot of people naturally do it at the beginning, but I always did that at the end. I saved about 10 minutes at the most for that so that we wouldn't get stuck talking about and discussing that and going off on tangents.
And I would move up to the beginning of the agenda like two or three key things that we want to discuss and talk about. In the early days I was treating board meetings more like status updates. My background's in project and product management stuff. And so in the same way that I would do an update of like, this is everything that's going on, this is the status on this thing, even like red, yellow, green lights on this kind of stuff. And we would walk through that and we would get so stuck in the minutia of that and everyone would have an opinion about what we should do about that.
Something I learned from watching when we hired the replacement CEO for me - he at one point said something like, well, we need to control the flow of information to the board. And not in a secretive or hiding anything important way, but just look, that's not relevant to this high level conversation that we're trying to have. So don't inject that and muddle the conversation. So that's kind of moving more in the direction of like what I would do differently with a board.
Micki: What was the composition of your board?
Paul: We established the board when we raised our first seed round. And so it was me, a co-founder and a lead investor. And then the following year we raised another seed extension. And then that lead investor came on. So we had two investors and my co-founder left the board and we replaced that with an independent seat. But I never filled that. And that was what drove the whole - for anyone who's read the articles I wrote, that's what drove the entire thing.
So then we had one more transition of just swapping out an investor. So in the end we had - well, before we hired the CEO, it was me, two investors and an empty independent. And then we hired the CEO and so he came in and took over as chairman. Then it was him, me, two investors and an empty independent. And when we shut the company down, we still had that empty independent seat.
Managing Complex Board Dynamics
Micki: And you said you had observers?
Paul: Yeah, and we had probably 1, 2, 3, 4 observers at various times. And some of them were valuable. And in fact, I had probably better relationships with some of the observers than I did with the directors, unfortunately. I wish it was the other way around, but yeah, it was a lot. And those were all sort of contingent. And that was another thing where I had read, hey, be careful about having too many observers and cooks in the kitchen.
But each time it came up, it was like, well, this is a condition for the investment and we really needed to do it.
Micki: And that's also where in the flow of board meetings, you can have the general board meeting where all are there and you can be giving the business update and have a topic for discussion where people can give input and observers can have influence. But then have an executive session where it's just the voting board directors, observers and other management invitees drop off and you can have a smaller, much more focused conversation if you need to.
And I think those sessions are valuable and those sessions are also very valuable for having those conversations about the board construction. How is the board - are we properly constructed? Do we need - are we missing skills? Let's do a skills gap analysis. Are there things we should change in the way we're running or handling board meetings? And that's where you could have been able to give feedback that, wow, it kind of feels hard to have substantive conversations with so many people in the room and your board should be able to help fix that.
Paul: That's a good example of the next question I was going to ask, which is - well, I think for myself, and I imagine other founders sort of see that, like when you get into the Robert’s Rules of Order and stuff for board meetings, it feels like weirdly formal and you're thinking, do I really need to have a motion and a second and all of that stuff. And executive sessions kind of felt that way to me too.
I didn't feel empowered or it just seemed like nonsense, like, why would I need to do this? So you just gave a great example of something that might be covered in executive session. But can you share some other examples that might be important to constrain to that portion of a meeting?
Micki: Well, wow. Mostly we've used them to talk about how the board is functioning and let's have a good open dialogue about what's working, what's not working. Should we be doing agendas differently? Are people coming prepared or not? How are we interacting? Do we need any outside help in the way we interact and talk? So that, to me has usually been the focus of the executive session.
Paul: Cool. Okay, next I want to talk about how you ended up on these boards. How did the company find you? Or vice versa. But I really want to get into the meat of, how should a founder, if they are going to be intentional about constructing their board, how should they find that independent board member? I had concerns that, well, I don't think that I should be recruiting for this per se. I don't think I should post a job description.
It's not like how I would do my normal hiring, but then I felt constrained to the network that I had and I could think of like only a couple people that might fit that bill. So how did you end up working with these boards? And what would you recommend founders do to find someone?
Finding the Right Independent Directors
Micki: Yeah, great questions. The first board that I was asked to join as an independent, I had known the founder CEO for probably four or five years. And we had first met a couple of months after he had founded the company. And over the course of four or five years, we had multiple conversations that were mostly catching up how business was going. I would see he had an ask, I could make an introduction. And we just kind of developed a mentoring relationship, you know, both ways.
So when after a financing round, he had the opportunity to add an independent, that's how I was asked to join the board or asked to interview for that independent role. And then met the other board members and was officially asked to join. So it was by developing that relationship.
The one that I'm on now, it's a company that's based in the UK and they are expanding into the US market. And they specifically did a skills gap and said we really need somebody that has agtech expertise. We really want somebody in the US - California is their most pertinent market. So ideally somebody well connected in the California ag industry. And through an industry group that publishes a list of ag tech mentors, that's how they originally found me.
They reached out and over the course of five or six months we had several mutual conversations as well as in person meetings when their chairman of the board happened to be in the US and when the CEO was in the US for business. So meetings in person and on both sides were doing our due diligence over about a four or five month period before we decided to go forward and I was asked by vote of the board to join.
But I think you're right. A lot of people, when they do start looking for independent directors, the mistake that we often make or even when we fill executive positions, we start by asking our network and then we're missing an opportunity to get that diversity of thought we need. Like if I had to add an independent director to a board of a company I was starting, I would definitely want somebody who's deep in legal and finance expertise because that's the stuff that I'm not that strong in. But I also don't have a lot of that expertise in my direct network.
I have a handful of people that I've worked with in the past, but I think there's nothing wrong with actually recruiting for that. And definitely try to get outside of your own network. But then you have really got to do due diligence. I mean you're interviewing them as you would almost interview a co-founder of the company, especially if you're bringing that independent in early.
Paul: Right. That makes a lot of sense. What do you think about who should be the chair of the board? Like especially as an early stage company, should that be the independent director or - I mean typically it's the CEO founder.
Micki: Typically the founder CEO. I don't - you know, that's a great question and I'm not sure I have a good answer for that.
Paul: Okay, cool. I've seen examples of both and I'm sort of curious. There's a startup I know where I'm friendly with the co-founders and they have an executive chairman who they brought on who is much more experienced and it’s been really interesting to watch how that level of experience helps when they're younger, less experienced founders.
It really helps establish, I'm not sure what to call it, just, it's not just credibility, but it's - there's like a wisdom there that you don't necessarily have as a first time or even second time founder. And so I'm sort of curious about that. Like if I were to start a company tomorrow, I would definitely be interested in testing that out for myself of hiring someone as the chairman.
Micki: Yeah, that's interesting. I think if I started a company tomorrow I might want to do the same thing. Especially if you have somebody that has more experience in governance that can set the right tone from the beginning, that you're doing regular board meetings, that you're doing them right, that you're setting up the right relationships in how that board operates and having somebody who can spend their time thinking about that. Because as the founder CEO, you've got a million other things on your plate.
And that's why governance falls to the wayside because everything else is so urgent. The governance, even if you know it's important, is never so urgent until you face some dilemma. So having somebody else with governance experience be an independent chairperson, I completely agree with that.
Paul: And that's actually my instinct as well is I felt like I never had time, it was always important but never urgent to work on that kind of stuff. And I wish that I had had someone else who could do that. And it also sort of makes sense too.
As the CEO, you are an operator and you're in operational mode and so to have someone who is going to be the steward of the governance, this higher level piece I think makes a lot of sense to me and it makes it in some ways easier for the CEO to show up and say this is what I need out of this meeting and here's our agenda, here's what we want to go through and here's what I need your input on.
Another aspect of it that I think about too is there is a power imbalance between financial investors and founders. And something that I thought about when I was talking with advisors about filling that independent seat - we talked about potential people who would have the respect of the financial investors when it appeared like I did not have that respect and I needed someone in there who could call bullshit on something or say, hey, this isn't constructive the way that we're talking about this. We need to do this in a different way.
And it's different when it's coming from the founder, especially if it's perceived as I'm complaining about my own treatment or something.
Micki: Right, right. That's a great point. And I think it's something that unless you've been around the block before in starting being in the board, you would never know that there's a nuance. For every individual investor that's sitting on a board, they are there representing one - they have a duty as a board director, a duty of care and a duty of loyalty to the company. And they may vote one way with their director hat on because that's the right thing for the company.
But then things that go to shareholder vote, their investment firm may vote their shares differently. And so many entrepreneurs have been shocked when, oh, but on the board you voted for this and now you're voting no as a shareholder. And sometimes those financial investors also struggle with that conflict of interest that doing something that's best for the company is not always best for them as investors. And that's where independence can really be a lot more objective.
And the other thing about independence, now that we're talking about independence is that they're compensated from the common shares in the same way that employees and founders are. So your best interest is their best interest.
Paul: Yes. Yeah, I think that's a really important component is thinking about that. I've talked with lots of founders, founders who are in the early stage who don't necessarily grasp the difference between common and preferred shares. And it's really important. And having that representation on the board where you are aligned with common, it can make a huge difference.
Micki: Yeah, especially in the current funding environment because I don't think there are many or any financing rounds that are going to get done without new lead investors coming in and getting new classes of preferred stock. And with that can come liquidation preferences and blocking rights and all these other things that you don't really see how they play out until there's an acquisition.
And suddenly one investor around the table is making the money and everybody else is losing money or not making out. And there's so many acquisitions that end up that way. So having somebody else there advocating for the common shares.
Parting Wisdom for Founders
Paul: I think we're close to wrapping up here. I wonder if you have any parting advice that we haven't covered around either things that people should be reading or learning more about governance, independent directors or anything like that. What do you think a takeaway should be?
Micki: I think a takeaway should be learn as much as you can about governance. If you're on the management team or you're founders, it's really important area to learn so that you can be in control of your destiny. In terms of recommended reading, definitely Startup Boards by Brad Feld over there because it's -
Paul: I have my copy right here.
Micki: I've highlighted it, written notes in the margins. It's such a great reference to have, and I would say that's like the first book that any founder should read.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I was recommended that book by our Techstars managing director, and I had it and it literally sat next to my desk in my office for years unread. And I so wish I had.
Micki: Oh, all these gems.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, that's right there. Cool. Well, I really appreciate you - well, for in the first place, reaching out to me. It's been a pleasure getting to know you, Micki, and thank you for your time and wisdom today. I hope this is going to be useful for people because as I was saying, I put a lot into the writing of what I thought should happen, but it's really helpful to hear from someone who has actually been seeing this stuff in practice. So thank you very much for being here.
Micki: Great connecting with you, and thank you so much for these very productive conversations that we've had these last couple of months.
Resources
Startup Boards by Brad Feld et al
My governance series: Why Your First Board Seat Should Be Independent