High Performance Boards, 2nd Edition

Joanne Marker and Board Service

At age 62, Joanne Marker had been a senior independent director for over 20 years on the boards of many different companies and public organisations.

The previous year, Joanne had taken early retirement from her job as a senior leader at Connect, a major US telecommunications company, where she had worked for more than two decades. Hers had been a rewarding and challenging career, of which she was proud.

Joanne now derived a different kind of satisfaction from her board service at three very different companies: Connect, international pharmaceutical company Ziogen, and engineering multinational SNB. In recent months a few other organisations had extended invitations, and she was currently evaluating each of them.

One morning, an email from her nephew Thorsten popped up on her screen.

Dear Aunt Joanne,

Exciting news! I just received an invitation to be on the board of Kloetzel & Brothers! First board meeting is next month. I wanted to pick the brain of my favorite board member! Can I take you to lunch at Mario's when you're in town next week?

Yours,

Thorsten

Thorsten was an ambitious, capable, and educated young man working in investment banking on Wall Street. Joanne had no doubt that he would make a fine board director; his knowledge of the financial markets and banking regulation would certainly be helpful to Kloetzel, a global financial services company. He was bright, energetic, and hardworking – and from what she had heard, had earned ...