How to join a corporate board

More accurately . . .
“How to be considered to be a member of a corporate board.”

Some boards don’t look like this anymore. Mostly.

A board recruiter asked an older gentleman, an acquaintance of mine, what type of board he would like to join. The gentleman, without pausing, stated “any board, doing anything.”

This is not the way to get onto a corporate board.

Specificity matters. What you bring to the board matters. How you think about boards matters.

The recruiter turned his back on the gentleman and, six years later, he still isn’t on any boards, private or public, despite advice that he change his broad approach.

What follows is a set of strategies for you to join a board, and I will lay out the differences between public and private, and for-profit and non-profit boards.

First, let’s start with eligibility guidelines.

Unless your title has “SVP” or above at regular companies, or “Senior Director/Director Level 2” at FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google or Microsoft), it is going to be an uphill battle to get on a board. They are looking for experience to deliver strategic insights into how the company is run, and that experience comes with age and title accumulation.

Second, expect several rejections and half-starts before you actually land on a board. (It was like dating in my 20s.)

Third, board membership can have its own tautology, especially for public, for-profit boards: the requirement to be on a board is that you are already on another public board.

Yes. I know.

Here is a bit of shorthand to help frame your thinking . . .

One path to being on a public company board is to join a not-for-profit board, get a sense of board dynamics, and then a few years down the road > migrate to advising a startup or two (based on your interests and ability to execute their goals), and then > a recrafting of your LinkedIn profile combined with a willingness to describe, in very precise terms, your desire to join a board to a specialized group of Board Recruiters that you cultivate over the years is typically the best way to unlock the opportunity.

My own journey is overly complex, like my spoken sentence structures.

I joined my first not-for-profit board when I was running my own startup, in 2009. Several large technology giants (Google and Microsoft), had banded together to create a search engine for service opportunities in the US. I joined the team that was working on this effort, and we were called All For Good. It was akin to a Google for volunteerism.

After working on the UX (user experience), initially, I was asked to join the board by Jonathan Greenblatt, who is now CEO of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League). He and I are friends to this day. We eventually sold the company to the Points of Light, another not-for-profit, in a friendly acquisition that gave the effort a good home. The CEO of the Points of Light went to my college, coincidentally.

You can see where this is going from a networking perspective.

I had advisory meetings with my startup, as well, but that was of a different scale and scope than a regular board meeting.

Three years after my startup was acquired by Samsung, I became CEO of THX Ltd. This was a limited liability company, partially owned by Lucasfilm (and thus by Disney) and partially owned by a private equity company out of Singapore. I had to learn how to run quarterly board meetings for a private company at that point, and I made it known to recruiters, including those who placed me at THX, that I was open to board opportunities.

Those opportunities then began to come, with the following outcomes:

1. I was offered a board role in 2015 with a tobacco company looking to expand its digital presence. For ethical reasons, I declined to even begin exploratory interviews. It would have been a fast track opportunity to a public board.
2. I interviewed for a board role at Nielsen, the ratings company. I didn’t prep properly, and I was overly focused on helping them operationally, rather than strategically.
3. I interviewed for a board role at Best Buy, including flying round-trip from California to Minneapolis and back one Saturday in the Fall. They leaned toward offering me the role, but declined because my employer had made the news around data security and they didn’t want the attention.
4. I was asked to join the GoPro board later in 2018, and I spoke with Lauren Zalaznick, who formerly ran Bravo networks and a number of other cable networks under the NBC umbrella. The interviews went well, I stayed focused on strategic advisorship, and ultimately landed on the board.

These are the other steps that you can take to make yourself more presentable for board opportunities, if you meet the criteria I have framed above:

1. Join a non-profit board.
2. Invest in startups in areas where you might be able to add value or you have an interest.
3. Make yourself available to board recruiters.
4. Find a rabbi who can seed your name with those searching for board members. These are often people who are already on a board.
5. Create a “board” LinkedIn profile or CV.

Things to avoid when attempting to join a public company board:

1. Being overly general with what types of boards you want to join, like the gentleman in the first paragraph. This is what doomed his candidacy for any board.
2. Dipping into operational matters when your obligations are strategic in nature. This is what doomed me at Nielsen.
3. Asking for what your pay will be. For public companies, this is part of financial filings, and asking indicates that you haven’t done your homework. This almost derailed things at GoPro.

You can think about your board journey as occurring over ten-year windows:

1. In your 20s | not much for you to do, [edit based on comment follows] but you can join a junior board or a non-profit.
2. 30s |attempt join a not-for-profit organization and also help startups where you can
3. 40s |similar to your 30s, but also look for formal advisor or board roles in private companies
4. 50s |craft your profile to look attractive to public company boards; you can also join not-for-profits if you have the ability to contribute philanthropically

“Yes Ty, this is nice, but I am actually interviewing for a board role! What should I do as prep for the interview?”

1. Focus on the strategic, not operational
2. Ask them about board meetings: does the board focus on operational details, or do you focus on strategic issues when the board meets?
3. What do you (the interviewer) personally bring to the board?
4. What do you (the interviewer) personally get out of being on the board?
5. “I am really good at [whatever it is that you, the reader, are good at]. How do you (the interviewer) envision my contributions to the board?

As always, happy to take feedback and comments below.

Kind regards, Ty