Join fellow attendees to kick off the event with some fun at the Topgolf Swing Suite at the Westin.
We invite executives seeking their first public company board to gain advice from veteran directors, followed by 1-on-1 discussions.
The peer-driven format of these sessions encourages active dialogue among participants. Don’t miss the opportunity to engage with director peers in a private, off-the-record setting to share challenges and solutions. No PowerPoint presentations! Participants help develop the discussion outline to ensure the most relevant conversation with actionable takeaways to improve your board committee’s effectiveness in the year ahead. Select from the following concurrent session based on your board role and interests:
For qualified executives not yet on a board, participate in the concurrent
Prospective Directors Board Resume Workshop
You’re up against 22,500 other qualified board candidates. So, it’s important that your communication documents (Resume, Bio, Cover Letter, LinkedIn Profile), look every bit as good as you are. This session will take you through the simple points to make this happen and review the essential elements of leveraging LinkedIn. You’ll have the opportunity to finetune your cover letter and board bio and share it with other participants for feedback.
Board Member, Air+ Inc
Best-in-class boards, like best-in-class sports teams all have a fundamental set of core competencies in common. The same qualities that make all-pro players make all-pro directors. What can boards learn from successful pro teams about organizational resiliency and competitive advantage? We’ll sit down with 4 former professional athletes to look at the parallels of championship teams and the leadership lessons we can all take from the field to the boardroom.
Board Member, SealSQ, Wisekey and GRIID
Former Washington Spirit, USWNT Member; Author, Raising Tomorrow's Champions
Former Board Member, CIT Group; Co-Founder, Former Pro Athlete Professional Governance Certificate Program at UTD
Vice President of Football Development, NFL
In 2023, 550 U.S. companies were publicly subjected to activist demands, an 8% rise over the previous year and nearly 70% more than the 326 targeted a decade earlier. But you don’t have to think of a potential activist campaign as automatically negative. Learning to think like an activist can also help you tap into ideas to bring about value-creating strategic change and stronger business models. Most activists tend to follow a predefined process to identify and engage target companies. We’ll explore three main components of the activist playbook—linking performance failures to organizational weaknesses, developing a plan of action, and creating a narrative in support of change— to help your board deal appropriately with a potential activist campaign, as the best interests of the company may indicate.
Former Board Member, P&F Industries, A&M Castle & Co. and PICO Holdings
Senior Managing Director, Strategic Communications – Americas Head of M&A, Activism & Governance, FTI Consulting
Partner, Co-Chair, Shareholder Activism & Corporate Defense Practice, Sidley Austin LLP
Most boards rightly put CEO succession among their top priorities. They make time, discuss candidates, and bring their most rigorous thinking to the decision process. Unfortunately, those good intentions don’t guarantee success. New CEOs fail at least 20% of the time (far more often by some estimates), but not for lack of effort. There are common recurring challenges that cause boards to stumble time and again, adding risk and uncertainty to the most important decision boards make. In this interactive dialogue, the panel will review live examples and data that illustrate several of the most common, but vexing dilemmas in the CEO succession process and how savvy boards avoid the pitfalls that snare so many.
Board Member, Lear Corp. and Berry Global Group
Board Member, CSX
Senior Vice President, Leadership Insights, DDI
For the past 18 months, we’ve heard about generative AI’s potential to revolutionize business operations, enhance consumer wellbeing and foster unparalleled societal benefits. And we know that unlocking these advantages hinges on our ability to adeptly manage and mitigate associated risks—data integrity, data privacy, data bias, to name a few. We’ll explore how companies can take a balanced approach to offense and defense when thinking about the strategic integration of AI in business decision-making to help your board navigate this new era responsibly.
Board Member, Games Global, Paloma Health, and StoneAge Tools
Board Member, Credit Suisse Funds, Chief Data Scientist, Numerati® Partners LLC
The Star is the 91-acre campus of the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters and practice facility in Frisco, Texas. Developed as a first-of-its-kind partnership between the City of Frisco and Frisco ISD, The Star gives fans the opportunity to connect with the Dallas Cowboys in ways they have never imagined.
Ford Center is comprised of a multi-purpose, 12,000 seat, indoor stadium as well as the entire Dallas Cowboys football operations and practice fields. The indoor stadium at Ford Center provides a state-of-the-art facility shared by the Dallas Cowboys, City of Frisco and Frisco ISD. The longstanding partnership that Ford and North Texas Ford Dealers have enjoyed with high school football and the Dallas Cowboys made Ford Center a seamless fit.
Interested attendees will have an opportunity to tour the facility during the reception.
Speaker: Keri Granger, CEO and Principal, TGN Consulting
Boards often intend to support the C-Suite, but they can inadvertently create unnecessary friction, from time-draining reporting requirements to risk-averse oversight that stifles innovation. In this interactive roundtable, we’ll explore the conditions under which boards become powerful catalysts for growth—or serious obstacles. We’ll share strategies for fostering authentic dialogue, aligning on core objectives, and shifting board–executive relationships to amplify value and return.
Board Member, LivePerson and Prisidio
Leader, U.S. Center for Corporate Governance, BDO
If continuous cost growth is the new normal, driven by technology, soaring government spending, rising employee healthcare costs and global disorder, then boards must work with their management teams to develop 5-year growth strategies that can withstand economic frictions. Productivity initiatives, new product launches, and pricing strategies to maintain margins all require a rethink. We’ll arm you with smart plays for your board to work with management to unlock your company’s full profit potential.
Partner, Simon-Kucher
It’s one thing to use quantitative measures to identify high-performing independent board members, but it’s quite another to figure out what qualities lead to those superior results. What metrics can be teased out as qualifications or predictors that put the most effective board members atop thousands of peers? It’s not random, and it is repeatable: They’re doing something different that is producing markedly better results.
We’ll sit down with one of America’s top 10 value-creating directors for candid advice and invaluable on handling boardroom disagreements, steering through setbacks, fundamental principles of communication, staying informed, and be willing to color outside the lines. You’ll leave inspired and ready to raise your game in the boardroom.
Board Member, Dillard’s and Paycom Software