Role-Based, Off-the-Record Conversations with Your Peers
Corporate Board Member’s Board Committee Peer Exchange is consistently rated the most valued part of the Summit because it’s where the real conversations happen. No slides. No scripts. No press. Just you and your fellow public company directors tackling the issues you decide matter most.
Each group is intentionally small and curated by board role and company size to ensure the conversation is both relevant and inclusive. Facilitators help guide the flow, but the agenda comes from you.
The result: candid, practical, peer-tested insights you can take straight back to your board—shared in an environment designed for real problem-solving.
Peer Exchange groups include:
Ahead of the Summit, we’ll gather your input to shape each committee’s discussion topics—so every session reflects what you are navigating right now.
Activism today is faster, more data-driven, and more strategic than ever. Activist investors are scrutinizing capital allocation, board composition, succession planning, and strategic clarity long before a proxy contest becomes public. Some boards are earning trust and credibility. Others are signaling vulnerability without realizing it.
In this candid fireside conversation, a leading activist will walk through how they evaluate companies and boards: what signals suggest strength, what signals suggest vulnerability, and how a thesis takes shape. We’ll explore where boards most often misread investor sentiment, how quickly patience can erode, and what separates companies that withstand pressure from those that invite it.
Head of M&A and Activism Communications, Americas, FTI Consulting
Board Member, HYPR, Quantexa and SecurityScorecard; Former Board Member, AMD and NACD; Retired EVP of Innovation and Technology, IBM
Board Member, Annaly Capital Management, Otis Worldwide Corporation and Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings
Board Member, Eversource Energy
After hearing the activist’s perspective, take 15 minutes with your table to pressure-test your own board’s blind spots. If an activist showed up tomorrow, what would be their first critique of your company’s oversight of strategy, risk, AI, or capital deployment? And, what one question should your board add to its next agenda to strengthen oversight in that area?
Board Member, 1800Flowers.com and Byrna Technologies
Board Member, Allegion, Group 1 Automotive and Grail Inc.; Former CHRO, Merck & Co.
EVP – Board and C-Suite Services, APTMetrics
Board Member, Allegion, Group 1 Automotive and Grail Inc.; Former CHRO, Merck & Co.
For companies across the globe, geopolitics has moved from a peripheral consideration to a key driver of the operating environment. Great power competition, regional conflicts, sanctions, and evolving industrial policies are reshaping markets and influencing decisions regarding investments, supply chains, and operational resilience. What was once seen as an external risk is now deeply intertwined with corporate strategy and long-term growth.
In this fireside conversation, Ambassador Marc Grossman will share his perspective on the global dynamics shaping board agendas in 2026 and beyond. Drawing on his experience at the intersection of diplomacy and business, he will explore how companies are redefining their approaches to growth, risk, and resilience. He will also highlight the critical questions leaders should be asking to help their organizations adapt and thrive in an increasingly uncertain world.
Vice Chairman, The Cohen Group
Partner, DLA Piper LLP
EVP – Board and C-Suite Services, APTMetrics
Board Member, Allegion, Group 1 Automotive and Grail Inc.; Former CHRO, Merck & Co.
With fellow directors at your table, you’ll break down key takeaways to identify the 5 leading indicators your boards should be tracking to prioritize your geopolitical risks in the coming year. What are the must-have geopolitical KPIs your board should monitor, and how is this information going to come to the board?
Boards are navigating a risk environment that is increasingly nonlinear, interconnected, and fast-moving. Yet many oversight models remain anchored in static dashboards, periodic reviews, and assumptions that may no longer hold. In this interactive session, directors will examine how risk oversight must evolve as strategy and disruption collide more frequently. Drawing on new research from Corporate Board Member and the EY Center for Board Matters, we’ll explore where boards stand today—and where oversight practices may need to shift.
Through interactive, engaging exercises and table discussion, participants will put together their own action plan by exploring questions such as:
This session is designed to spark candid peer dialogue and practical reflection—so you leave with at least one action item you plan to bring back to your own boardroom.
Board Member, AutoNation
Board Member, Markel Group, Las Vegas Sands and Clarus Corporation
Leader, EY America’s Center for Board Matters
The Board Leadership Awards celebrate the directors and boards who aren’t just meeting governance expectations—they’re resetting them. Past and present honorees embody the discipline, foresight, and conviction required to guide companies through uncertainty while creating value for shareholders, employees, customers, and communities.
At a moment when strong board leadership matters more than ever, we’re proud to spotlight this year’s Independent Director of the Year honoree:
Lead Director, Royal Caribbean Group
Panel with award honorees
We’ll sit down with this year’s Director of the Year honoree, John Brock to reflect on what it actually takes to provide effective oversight when the stakes are highest — how to support bold strategic decisions without rubber-stamping them, how to manage the board-management boundary through leadership transitions, and what he’s learned from decades leading complex, consumer-facing businesses about the judgment calls that define a board’s legacy.
Lead Director, Royal Caribbean Group
Join fellow attendees for some festive networking as we celebrate our award honorees together in-person!
Editor-in-Chief & Chief Content Officer, Chief Executive Group
Global Co-CEO and Board Member, AlixPartners
Gather with director peers and subject matter experts to explore pertinent board issues in a small group setting to allow for ample Q&A and idea sharing. Topics to be announced.
Attracting and retaining key executive talent is a priority for most Compensation Committees. In an increasingly competitive market where pay levels continue to increase, one-time special awards are more prevalent and leadership stability is paramount, it is more important than ever to examine compensation programs for their performance leverage and retentive qualities. This is even more pronounced in roles that oversee and manage Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy. At this morning’s roundtable we will discuss some of the issues facing Compensation Committee members and approaches for addressing these challenges.
Founding Partner, Compensation Advisory Partners
In today’s environment, credibility isn’t assumed—it’s earned, shaped, and amplified. For directors looking to deepen their influence or secure additional board roles, a clearly defined personal brand can serve as a strategic asset. This roundtable will explore how board members can elevate their visibility as subject-matter authorities, communicate their leadership philosophy with clarity, and cultivate trust with stakeholders—from investors to nomination committees. We’ll explore actionable ways to strengthen your professional narrative, build thought leadership in a cluttered space, and ensure your voice stands out as board opportunities evolve.
Publisher, The Leading Authority
This year’s proxy disclosures were a reflection of 2024 compensation actions—and the world has changed a lot since those decisions were made. This discussion will focus on emerging compensation trends in response to tariffs, ESG pushback, an increased focus on executive security, designing incentives to address macroeconomic volatility, and more.
Managing Director, FW Cook
AI is no longer just generating insights — it is making decisions. Across industries, algorithms are allocating capital, adjusting pricing, approving transactions, managing supply chains, and triggering operational shifts at machine speed. Autonomy is quietly moving from pilot projects to enterprise infrastructure. For boards, this is not a technology story. It is a paradigm shift in oversight.
When decisions are distributed across models rather than concentrated in executives, what changes about accountability? How should directors think about risk appetite when systems can act before humans intervene? Where do guardrails belong — and who owns them?
This opening session will challenge directors to rethink oversight for a world where AI doesn’t just inform management judgment — it increasingly becomes part of it. The question isn’t whether autonomy is coming. It’s whether boards are prepared for what it means.
Chairman and CEO, Atos Group
Chief Technology Officer, Atos
Board Member, MSCI and CSX
Director, PwC Governance Insights Center
AI is accelerating the cyber threat landscape in ways few governance models were designed to handle. From AI-assisted social engineering and autonomous attack chains to compromised training data and emerging quantum implications for encryption, the foundations of digital trust are shifting. The pace and complexity of threats are increasing, while response windows are shrinking.
In this interactive working session, directors will step through real-world scenarios that illustrate how AI is reshaping both offensive and defensive capabilities—and what that means for board oversight. As autonomy scales and encryption standards evolve, what long-term resilience questions should boards be raising now?
Through structured table discussions and “pause-the-incident” moments, directors will examine how oversight must adapt as AI and cyber become inseparable—and leave with clearer expectations for management preparedness in 2026 and beyond.
Head of Board Advisory, Americas & Asia-Pacific, Nasdaq
Executive Director, Diligent Institiute
Chief Technology Officer at Lightspeed Commerce; Former CTO, Okta and Glassdoor
Board Chair, DocuSign; Board Member, Costco Wholesale Corporation, Sana Biotechnology; Former CEO, Frontier Communications
Designed for deeper engagement, these small-group sessions challenge directors to apply insights to realistic governance scenarios. Through facilitated case studies and simulations, you’ll examine how decisions play out in practice—and leave with practical ideas you can use immediately.
Are you ready for the first call from an activist? This interactive simulation will walk you through the anatomy of a modern activist campaign—from initial outreach to public escalation to final resolution. You’ll gain a 360-degree view from legal, banking, and communications experts on how to:
Partner & co-chair of Shareholder Activism and Corporate Defense practice, Sidley
Partner, Kekst CNC
Certain business decisions now carry a different level of legal and reputational risk than they did even a few years ago. Issues once managed primarily at the operational or management level — workforce policies, AI deployment, data protection, trade secrets — are increasingly becoming targets for litigation, regulatory scrutiny, and public challenge. For boards, the question is no longer simply whether the company is compliant. It is whether directors fully understand how evolving legal tactics, political pressure, and shifting stakeholder expectations are changing the company’s exposure profile, and when an operational issue becomes a governance issue. In this discussion, participants will examine how litigation risk is evolving across several high-pressure areas and what that means for board oversight, escalation, and decision-making. Topics will include:
Shareholder & Co-Chair, Litigation and Trials Practice Group, Littler
Shareholder, Littler
Description to come
CEO and Founder, Global Data Innovation; Author, Trust: Responsible AI, Innovation, Privacy and Data Leadership
Designed for deeper engagement, these small-group sessions challenge directors to apply insights to realistic governance scenarios. Through facilitated case studies and simulations, you’ll examine how decisions play out in practice—and leave with practical ideas you can use immediately.
As M&A activity accelerates amid regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical uncertainty, activism, and rapid technological change, boards are under growing pressure to ensure deals are completed in the right way. This panel explores what directors should focus on in 2026—from assessing deal rationale and risk to navigating stakeholder pressure and overseeing execution. Whether you are on the sell side or the buy side, this panel discussion will give you the tools to ask the right questions and focus on the most important aspects of the transaction.
Global Chairman of Corporate, Linklaters LLP
Board Member, Hitachi
CEO succession is often viewed through the lens of boardroom decision making, but the most important lessons emerge across the entire leadership journey. This session explores succession from every angle—candidate, newly appointed CEO, board member, and ultimately architect of succession for the next generation of leaders. Through candid, real-world stories, we will examine what it takes to earn the CEO role, transition into it, engage the board, build a great team, and navigate the CEO terrain. Along the way, we will explore the critical distinction between filling a seat and building a leader. The discussion will also highlight new, innovative approaches to succession that mitigate key succession risks. Combining real-world experience with emerging practices, this session offers a rare, end-to-end view of one of the board’s most important responsibilities.
Executive Vice President, Board and C-Suite Advisory Services, APTMetrics
CEO, MaineHealth; Board Member, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina
As companies expand globally, governance blind spots can emerge in ways that are difficult to detect from the boardroom. Local autonomy, fragmented entity structures, inconsistent oversight practices, and uneven visibility across jurisdictions can create risks that remain hidden until pressure exposes them. In this roundtable discussion, we’ll explore where international operations most often create governance gaps—and how boards can better assess whether management has the visibility, accountability, and oversight structures needed to support global scale. Topics will include:
CEO, Kalexius
Tone at the Top isn’t just a values issue—it’s a governance risk with real reputational, control, and disclosure consequences. This session will explore how boards set, reinforce, and test ethics and culture, and how misalignment can weaken controls, promote misinformed decision‑making, and discourage accountability. You’ll also get a practical update on what regulators are signaling (including the SEC’s new “SOX Group” and the evolving state of the PCAOB), and how the SEC’s increased focus on individual accountability and controls may raise the bar for expectations of directors and everyone in their audit and controls reporting chain. Built for all directors, it delivers experience‑based questions and actions to strengthen oversight where it matters most – at the top.
Former Assistant Director, Division of Enforcement, SEC
Partner, Meridian Compensation Partners
Moderator:
Leader, U.S. Center for Corporate Governance, BDO
Executive compensation is one of the fastest ways for a board to earn investor confidence—or ignite investor frustration. But behind every headline, Say-on-Pay dip, or activist letter sits a series of judgment calls that look very different depending on who’s watching.
In this scenario-driven session, Meridian Compensation Partners will walk through a real-world composite case involving a CEO pay decision with competing pressures around performance, culture, retention, and investor expectations. Along the way, we’ll pause for reactions from an institutional investor and an experienced compensation committee chair—highlighting where boards see alignment, where investors see disconnects, and where unintended consequences emerge.
With table reactions and “pause-the-case” decision points, this session brings to life how compensation decisions actually unfold—and the questions directors must ask to avoid unforced errors in the year ahead.
Partner, Meridian Compensation Partners
EVP and Chief Legal, Risk and Regulatory Officer, Nasdaq
Nasdaq
Effective board decisions are shaped not only by facts and analysis, but also by culture, dynamics, bias, and how discussion unfolds in the room. In this interactive session, directors will explore how board culture influences judgment, debate, and consensus, and why even strong boards can make poor decisions under pressure. The session will invite participants to react to real-life scenarios and engage with peers on practical ways to improve decision-making in the boardroom.
Principal, PwC’s Governance Insights Center
Director, PwC’s Governance Insights Center
In every boardroom, there are moments when the issue is clear—but the path forward is uncomfortable. Underperformance lingers. Strategic doubts go unspoken. Evaluation feedback surfaces concerns that never fully resolve.
In this interactive session, directors will examine where candor breaks down in real governance moments: CEO succession readiness, executive performance concerns, strategic drift, and board dynamics that discourage dissent. Through structured table exchanges and practical scenarios, we’ll explore what distinguishes boards that move from awareness to action—and how to create conditions where difficult conversations strengthen oversight rather than stall it.
Author, The 5-Week Leadership Challenge; Co-Author, Disrupt Everything; Global Leadership Practice Leader, FranklinCovey
World’s Best-selling Author; Co-Author, Disrupt Everything
AI is not only reshaping the enterprise—it is beginning to reshape the boardroom itself.
From activism preparedness and geopolitical stress-testing to enterprise risk monitoring, directors are exploring how AI can sharpen oversight and surface blind spots. But new capability brings new responsibility: where does AI enhance judgment—and where does it risk distorting it?
In this interactive capstone session, you’ll work through real board-level scenarios tied directly to the themes of the Summit, examining how AI can responsibly strengthen governance while defining the guardrails needed to preserve accountability, confidentiality, and independent judgment. This is not a technology demo. It’s a director-to-director working session designed to leave you with clarity about where AI can elevate board oversight—and where it must be governed as rigorously as the enterprise it supports.
Board Member, Lloyd’s of London, Hays and Trustpilot
Executive Director, Diligent Institute
As we close the Summit, this final session turns two days of insight into concrete action. At your tables, you’ll identify the one question your board needs to start asking in the next 90 days—and the one action you personally will take before your next meeting. A rapid share-out will capture the most resonant commitments from across the room, sending you home with clarity, momentum, and a sharper sense of your board oversight responsibilities.
Author, The 5-Week Leadership Challenge; Co-Author, Disrupt Everything; Global Leadership Practice Leader, FranklinCovey
World’s Best-selling Author; Co-Author, Disrupt Everything
Come ready to share challenges, compare oversight strategies and trade lessons with peers navigating similar pressures.
Audit Committee Exchange
From evolving disclosure requirements to AI risk oversight, the audit committee’s scope continues to expand—while expectations around accuracy, ethics, and internal controls have never been higher. This off-the-record session gives audit chairs and members a chance to compare approaches to managing external auditor relationships, cybersecurity readiness, audit committee workloads, internal reporting, and emerging financial risk.
Compensation Committee Exchange
Today’s comp committees are under increasing scrutiny—not only for pay-for-performance alignment, but also for how executive incentives reflect evolving priorities around risk, culture, human capital, and long-term value creation. In this session, compensation committee members and chairs will exchange views on evolving incentive structures, performance metrics, DEI-related targets, shareholder engagement, and how comp intersects with succession planning and CEO evaluation.
Nominating & Governance Committee Exchange
With heightened focus on board composition, refreshment, committee mandates, and ESG-related responsibilities, the nominating & governance committee plays a critical role in shaping long-term board effectiveness. This session offers committee members a private forum to discuss recruitment strategies, onboarding and director education, committee evaluation practices, shareholder expectations, and how to evolve governance practices to stay ahead of risk and disruption.
Chairmen & CEOs Exchange
Whether you’re a non-executive chair, lead director, or sitting CEO, this conversation is for the most senior voices in the boardroom. You’ll engage in a candid peer dialogue around topics like managing the board/management boundary, building trust across leadership transitions, ensuring alignment on strategy and risk, and leading through external pressure—whether from activists, regulators, or the media.
General Counsel Exchange
The GC’s role as board advisor and governance steward has never been more critical—or more complex. In this session, public company GCs will gather to discuss boardroom dynamics, director engagement, disclosure challenges, regulatory developments, and how legal teams are helping boards navigate emerging areas of risk like AI, cyber, and ESG litigation. A private, practical forum to sharpen judgment and compare strategies with those who walk the same tightrope.
