Corporate Governance: Essentials for a New Business Era

Today’s corporate boards face historic and unprecedented challenges, including the global pandemic and its economic fallout, civil unrest, cybersecurity threats, the #MeToo movement, and more. Boards of directors must navigate these sources of unexpected enterprise risk while capably monitoring their firms’ financial performance. For those responsible for filling board seats, the push toward making boards more diverse and inclusive adds complexity. Meanwhile, new opportunities are emerging for those seeking board service.

Corporate Governance: Essentials for a New Business Era provides critical tools for aspiring, newly appointed, and veteran board members, and for executives working with their board or other boards. Participants will gain insight into the duties and nuances of board service, and learn to forge partnerships with company officers to strengthen financial return, enterprise risk management, and governance diversity.

Program Experience

Highlights and Key Outcomes

In Corporate Governance: Essentials for a New Business Era, you will:

• Explore board opportunities for C-suite officers in areas including technology, human resources, and sustainability
• Grasp how a director’s role is changing in today’s social, legal, and business environment
• Learn to present yourself as an attractive candidate for boards
• Look inside the process for nominating, selecting, and onboarding directors

Experience and Impact

Traditional board governance is a thing of the past. Today’s directors must be ready and able to handle a wide range of enterprise risks that could impact a large company. Led by top Wharton management faculty, Corporate Governance: Essentials for a New Business Era offers those aspiring to be on boards, recently appointed to a board, or experienced directors and company executives a wide-ranging look at what constitutes successful board service in the current environment. The specific content of the program will also be informed by the year’s most pressing issues. The focus in 2020 will include company and legal issues related to diversity and inclusion; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics; and leading in the boardroom.

Participants will explore how to present themselves as candidates for boards against the backdrop of social and legislative efforts to make boards more ethnically diverse and gender inclusive. You will also learn about the functional capabilities that are valued on boards, including strategy, technology, human resources, sustainability, and international experience. You will acquire strategies for marketing yourself to recruiters and come to recognize the value you can bring to a boardroom setting.

Individuals already on boards will gain new insights into managing emerging sources of enterprise risk and how best to diversify their board to address new regulations and investor expectations.

In addition to the outstanding faculty, selected guest speakers will enhance the program’s practical, real-world approach. Speakers may include veteran board chairs and lead directors; a federal prosecutor who has conducted internal investigations for major telecommunications and financial firms; and an executive-search partner experienced in board recruitment and onboarding.

A valuable benefit of this program is the substantial networking opportunity. You will have time to interact with seasoned and board-ready individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds and experience, providing for an expanded peer group. The need has never been greater for board members with new perspectives and experience. Timely and unique, Corporate Governance helps you take full advantage of the rapidly changing environment for both board selection and director responsibilities.

Session topics include:

• Shareholders and stakeholders
• Social and political strategies
• Enterprise risk management
• Recruitment and onboarding
• Overseeing ESG metrics
• Gender and diversity in the boardroom
• International governance