Ever Consider Joining a Board?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Have you ever thought about joining a board? Research suggests women’s presence improves the decisions these groups make and, in turn, improves financial performance. Being on a corporate board gives you a say in how the business is run, including how it treats employees and customers. If you’re a senior executive, experience on a public or a private company board boosts your CEO eligibility, if that’s a goal of yours. Being on a non-profit board is where many directors get their start or stay. It’s a chance to stretch your mind, your skills, your network. It’s a way to have an impact on your neighborhood or your alma mater or your industry.

But maybe you haven’t considered serving, because it sounds like another suck on your time, or the benefits aren’t clear, or you were waiting for retirement, or you just didn’t know enough to dive in—or no one asked you. Well, let’s test those assumptions and fill in some gaps. Eight women volunteered to tell us how they landed a board seat, gained confidence there, and grew personally and professionally. I hope their perspectives round out your sense of what the work is and that they inspire you to sooner or later try it for yourself. And if you’re doubting your qualifications, Lani Hollander, one of our volunteers, will tell you, “Just don’t.”

LANI HOLLANDER: I think especially for getting started with a smaller non-profit board, the main thing that matters, really, is passion and interest.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Passion and interest is how, in 2019, Lani got invited to join a board, although networking was key and getting a master’s in non-profit management must have given her a leg up. The invitation came from the executive director of a humanitarian organization in Thailand whom she’d known for several years. Back in 2015, Lani worked for a different humanitarian organization, and the two partnered on programming. They got along so well that after Lani left that job, they kept in touch through regular calls. During one of those calls—

LANI HOLLANDER: It became apparent that their board needed some, some new people to join, that they were looking to recruit. It really felt natural for me to get involved, And I felt that I had skills, especially working in the non-profit sector for, for a decade at that point, specifically within small non-profits, like non-profits with, ah, $300,000 of annual revenue or less. I felt that I could contribute as a board member.

AMY BERNSTEIN: The role suited her. She went from participating in meetings to preparing the agendas to suggesting the group re-elect officers to becoming its chair.

LANI HOLLANDER: I always felt really included. I always felt like I was able to express my opinion or make a point. And there was incredibly good rapport and communication among everyone. And so, I think that that created a space for people to show up as themselves, to communicate without fear of judgment, to be compassionate, and to make space for one another.

AMY BERNSTEIN: She stepped down at the end of 2022.

LANI HOLLANDER: And that’s mostly just because I work, uh, my life has changed a lot, I got married, I became a mom. My daughter just turned two. So, it’s really just more of like a personal capacity thing.

AMY BERNSTEIN: For now, she keeps a list of non-profits to approach when she’s ready to jump back in.

You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Amy Bernstein. I’m also considering jumping back in. About 20 years ago, I joined the board of a non-profit women’s journalism group, and a few years later, I led the board of a friend’s non-profit. The two organizations could not have been more different, and their meetings could not have been more different. But in both cases, I was flying absolutely blind. I didn’t know the rules, and I wasn’t sure what was expected of me. Getting up to speed was really hard and so humbling.

Now, all these years later, I’ve had a couple of decades more experience, I’ve been in senior leadership roles, I’ve led large teams in complicated projects, and I’ve been thinking about boards again. And if I join another board, yeah, I will definitely be a lot better prepared, partly because of that experience and partly because of this episode.

Ellen Zane is here with me to give context and more insight as we hear from those eight volunteers. In her last day job, she was CEO of Tufts Medical Center, a position she held until she retired in 2011, only to ramp up her career—on boards. Right now, she’s on many. They are a mix of public, private, private equity, and not-for-profit. And on top of all that, she directs the Women on Boards program within Harvard’s School of Public Health. That program prepares executives, and not just those from healthcare, to become directors themselves.

So, Ellen, thank you so much for being with us today.

ELLEN ZANE: Thank you for inviting me.

AMY BERNSTEIN: How did you get into the whole board business?

ELLEN ZANE: A lot of it is serendipity.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

ELLEN ZANE: When I announced that I was stepping down as the CEO at Tufts Medical Center, shockingly and unexpectedly, my phone started to ring.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ha.

ELLEN ZANE: And there were a lot of boards looking for women to assume in the corporate board area but all boards a position. Healthcare is such a large sector. Whether it’s life sciences or healthcare provision insurance technology, medical technology, pharmaceuticals. So, there were many, many opportunities; and the truth is, uh, my first six months after I stepped down, I was flying around the country, interviewing these companies, telling them all, I can’t do it all. But it turned out to be an incredible opportunity because there is a huge need.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, you know, it was the serendipity of your stepping down as CEO of Tufts Medical Center, which means that you were already very prominent in your field. Why did it take the trigger of your retirement from Tufts?

ELLEN ZANE: First of all, I was on one public company board while I was working, but there are rules through the SEC and other areas where typically full-time executives don’t sit on more than one for-profit board. So, once you step down, the assumption is that you have more time. So, when you step down, that’s when they come calling, typically, at least on the for-profit side.

AMY BERNSTEIN: On the for-profit side. And you had served on a non-profit board before.

ELLEN ZANE: Several. I had been on university boards, uh, and some other non-profits as well, including the hospital on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Washington.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Now, did you realize when you joined those boards that they were essential for steps to getting into the corporate board work?

ELLEN ZANE: If you ask a recruiter, they often say that sitting on a not-for-profit board is not a precursor for sitting on a for-profit board. Others of us, who have done both, believe that it is. Because while it’s a different form of governance, interacting with management, interacting with other board members, interacting on financial issues, personnel issues, strategic issues, you know what the content areas are, you have some basic ground rules. For example, the difference between the governance of an organization and the operations of an org.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right.

ELLEN ZANE: As they say, “Noses in, but fingers out,” on the board side. So put your nose in so you learn and understand how to govern; but in terms of the day-to-day operations and the management, that’s up to management. Once you’re on a board, you don’t do that anymore.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, so you learn what lines you can and…

AMY AND ELLEN TOGETHER: …cannot cross.

AMY BERNSTEIN: You know, before we go any further, let’s do sort of a 101 on boards. Why do they even exist?

ELLEN ZANE: Because there is a difference between the governance of an organization and the oversight and governance of the assets, whether they’re charitable assets or financial assets. That is why boards exist, to oversee that so that management doesn’t have exclusive rights to use those assets. So, boards are governance, while management is operations and execution. So, it’s really oversight of some type of assets.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mm-hmm. Boards have a specific set of functions, though, and they have committees about finance and committees about compensation. Talk to us a little bit about how boards actually function.

ELLEN ZANE: What they all have in common is usually, the number one responsibility is, the hiring and firing of the CEO. And when push comes to shove, it comes down to that. But they have other oversight. They have strategy responsibilities in terms of weighing in on that, audit responsibilities, compliance responsibilities for the  correct compliance of the organization, particularly boards having to do with financial services. Uh, most for-profit boards have, for committees they have audit, nomination and governance committees, and the third is compensation. They’ll have some other committees, perhaps a finance committee, perhaps a human resources committee, but the main threads that you see in almost all boards are the audit, nomination and governance, and compensation.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And nomination is really about the nomination of the CEO, right?

ELLEN ZANE: No, that’s usually about the nomination of people on the board.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, so other board members.

ELLEN ZANE: And who sits on what committees …

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, I see.

ELLEN ZANE: … of, of other board members.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, you’re self-governing.

ELLEN ZANE: You self-govern, that’s right.

AMY BERNSTEIN: (laughing)

ELLEN ZANE: And you even give yourself pay raises. That’s the other thing you do. (laughing)

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, awesome. (laughing)

The finance committee is where Patti Neuhold-Ravikumar started on each of the five non-profit boards she served on while she was president of the University of Central Oklahoma. She’d been the university’s CFO and, before that, its associate VP for planning and budget. And so naturally, the regional food bank and chamber of commerce and others wanted her overseeing their money.

PATTI NEUHOLD-RAVIKUMAR: And I’m fine serving on a finance committee, but I want to move around when I’m on the board. I don’t want to be pigeonholed, right? So, if another opportunity comes up on the development committee or on the governance committee, I ask to be moved to those places so that, number one, I can give my experience and expertise to different areas, and then number two, so that I can get that experience in return. The next board I may serve on, I may not serve on the finance committee at all. Finance was a stepping stone for me, it was not a destination. But you, sometimes, you have to rely on, on what you have until you can create what you want to be or where you want to go.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And if you want to stay within your specialty but branch out into unfamiliar industries, that’s an option too. For instance, Jolene Morse has a doctorate in risk management, and she’s, no surprise, on the risk committees for two boards. One’s for a public hospital, and the other’s for an orthotic and prosthetic association. So, both in healthcare, an industry she had zero professional experience in before scoring those seats in 2020.

JOLENE MORSE: What I really wanted to do with a board position was continually learn, challenge my own way of thinking. So, I would have a look at the position descriptions and say, Hm, no, that doesn’t actually sound like me. Or, Oh, that’s something that I might be interested in. So, I’d really sort of done a lot of prep work leading up to actually starting to apply to really narrow down where I thought value proposition could be.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Here’s how she positioned herself during the interviews.

JOLENE MORSE: It was at a time where risk was sort of front-of-mind for a lot of people, but they didn’t have a depth of knowledge. So, for me, it was really saying, “You know, risk is something that I’m quite passionate about, but I think it gets undersold because people do it because they think they have to rather than, How can this add value to my strategy?” So, for me, it was really bringing a different perspective to the conversation around that.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, Ellen, I listened to Jolene’s story, and I say to myself, Really? You just sort of decide you want to join a specific board, and you get on the board? Is that how it works?

ELLEN ZANE: No.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Okay.

ELLEN ZANE: (laughing) It is, it is not. Firstly, we all have to remember, it isn’t about what we want, per se.It’s about what the boards need.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right.

ELLEN ZANE: And I think a lot of people who desire board service think about it in reverse, they think about what they would like.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mm-hmm. Right.

ELLEN ZANE: And we need to understand and be patient, where boards have opportunities that match what we want. But first and foremost, boards are going to do what they need to do for themselves.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, who makes the match?

ELLEN ZANE: It’s very interesting. If you ask a board recruiter, and they’re out there—if you ask them, they’ll even tell you that not more than 35% of all seats that are given in boards come through a recruiter. Whether it’s not-for-profit or for-profit, it’s typically who you know, and networking is important.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right.

ELLEN ZANE: And I always tell people, “You never know who you’re sitting next to at a breakfast on an airplane.” That’s how this happens, where someone knows you and someone knows a bit about your background and the skillset and the judgment that you have. And someone says, “This might be a good match for a particular organization or company.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: That’s how Anna Manning came to the board of the elementary school connected to her church. Someone knew she was a lawyer, reasoned she had sound judgment, and badgered her until she signed on. Seven years later, she’s all in as the committee chair for curriculum and standards.

ANNA MANNING: But when I first started on the school board, I knew nothing about children’s education and just the amount of lingo and acronyms. I was a bit more reticent about coming forward and saying, “Wait a minute. Like, why are you doing it like that? What does that even mean?”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Then, in her day job, she moved into a strategy role that fortuitously let her see its board of directors in action.

ANNA MANNING: A lot of them have been on boards for years, like boards of huge banks, and I saw people coming from completely different sectors, who would say, “Wait. What? You know, you should be thinking about this from this lens, or you should be thinking about it from that lens.” Or they would stop the whole meeting and say, “Sorry. What does TFG mean?” And I was like, Oh, yeah. I can do that, too. And I just started being a lot more curious and a lot more persistent with the things that I would ask and sort of the line of inquiries that I would take. And when I actually did that, I found it never really let me down.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ellen, you know, Anna, Anna’s experience is one that every novice has. The rules are weird, they’re not intuitive. I had that experience. It’s as if there’s not on-ramp into these conversations. You must hear from a lot of women in your work with the School of Public Health. What questions come up, and what do you tell women who are new to this whole world?

ELLEN ZANE: I do get the question often about when to speak up and when not to and how to judge that and gear it. It’s an EQ skill; and understanding that you should ask questions, and there is no question that’s too small.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And you have a responsibility to deeply understand what’s going on.

ELLEN ZANE: To deeply understand. Some questions, however, are better offline because it may take people down a rabbit hole that they don’t want to go in in the middle of a board meeting. It’s reading the room and knowing when it’s important to speak up and insert yourself into the conversation and when it’s not.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mm-hmm. I mean, am I adding, am I pushing the conversation forward, or am I just re-repeating what others are saying, saying the obvious?

ELLEN ZANE: Repeating myself.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Speaking up doesn’t guarantee you’ll be heard. Even when you’re technically the leader, which caught Lindsay Schwartz off guard. She’s been on the board of directors for the Center for Excellence in Assisted Living for 10 years and was its chair for seven.

LINDSAY SCHWARTZ: My vice-chair was a male, the immediate past chair was a male, and at one point, we had an executive director who was a male, and it was hard to get a word in. And I, there were a few times where I was like, “I have something to say. You all need to listen.” And when I said that, I think that was like a, Oh, okay, we are not giving her space to talk. And I also just kind of took over going through the agenda and, you know, making sure everyone was heard. That was something that was really important to me.

AMY BERNSTEIN: For many women, Lindsay says, there’s another aspect of reading the room: watching your tone.

LINDSAY SCHWARTZ: I would always think, “Oh, do I sound like a bitch?” when I’m being assertive. And I think I would just whisper to myself, “Don’t worry about that, and if someone thinks you are, you’re not, or who cares?” (laughing) I mean, I have like a really good therapist that was like, “You need to speak up, and you’re not, you’re not being a bitch.” And like, we would talk about some of the things that were going on or the way I was treated.

And I also, one of the things that I think is so important is finding a mentor. We had an incredible board chair, Pat Giorgio, and having her too and just reaching out to her when I needed, but I would always joke with her, I’d be like, “I’m always thinking, what would Pat do?” Because I saw her in a vote that no one wanted to be the person to do the motion on. It was just a very politically charged vote and motion, and, and she passed over to vice chair, and she made the motion. In seeing that, and I was like, Well, I don’t think she’s acting like a bitch. She’s, you know, taking, taking lead, she’s being a leader, she’s doing hard things.

And I think it was that and having my therapist, too, and just realizing, you know, not everyone is going to like what you have to say or agree with it, and it doesn’t mean you’re wrong, and it might not mean that they’re wrong, but I’d worry about that in the beginning.

AMY BERNSTEIN: This sort of self-monitoring is common, including among directors of public companies. After interviewing 43 of them, researchers Tiffany Trzebiatowski, Courtney McCluney, and Morela Hernandez describe their findings in an article called How Women on Boards Navigate the “Warmth-Competence” Line, the line being that delicate balance of empathy and directness that people expect from us. Navigating it becomes ever more delicate when you see these people quarterly when the stakes are always high. This is why women deliberately pose ideas as questions, like, “I wonder what would happen if …” Softly, politely. It’s why they slip in their credentials. It’s why they make a real effort to get to know other members personally, so when they disagree with them during a meeting, the challenge doesn’t feel so threatening.

As board president of Alaska Dance Theater, Lori Moore deploys another of the tactics, waiting to weigh in on a major decision until everyone else has.

LORI MOORE: It’s not great to be the one kind of pressing your opinion. I want to hear everybody in the room, and if I give my opinion first, sometimes I don’t get all of the information, or I don’t get everybody collaborating within the room. So, in those types of situations, what I’ll do is I’ll present the facts really, really flat, you know, in a very confident manner, and then really encourage other people to jump in and be more assertive about their opinion. And then I can come over top and collate all of those opinions into a true decision.

It’s actually helped to be on a board because I’ve been able to practice different ways of tackling the competence-versus-warmth type of dynamic. As somebody that works in technology, I make that calculation all the time. And sometimes what I’ve found that bleeds into my work life, too It’s helped me figure out ways to be more assertive without coming over as dominant or not a team player.

AMY BERNSTEIN: One of the reasons women resort to these tactics is there’s no onboarding that explains what the norms and expectations are. That’s the position Anna was in when she joined the elementary school board.

ANNA MANNING: It was kind of like, “Throw you in, here’s the agenda for the meeting, here’s the papers, go.” (laugh)

AMY BERNSTEIN: If you find yourself in a similar position, ask the chair so that you can enter that first meeting clear on how and when to contribute. Actually, best practice, Ellen says, is to suss out the culture before assuming the role.

ELLEN ZANE: It is your job to understand that culture, both within the board and, uh, within the management team and the board’s relationship to the management team. And by talking to members of management and talking to our colleagues on the board, and if their stories are similar, it’s a better shot than if they are all talking differently, and you think you’re getting the company line. You never know everything, but it’s really important to do your homework, because if the culture isn’t good, you won’t have a good time on that, on that board.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, it’s perfectly okay to call up other board members and, and introduce yourself and say, “I’ve been offered a seat on the board. I’d love to get your take on how this board operates?”

ELLEN ZANE: It’s perfectly okay to speak to whomever it is who’s recruiting you, the board chair, head of nominations or governance, and say, “I want to talk with other people on the board.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ah, and that person will make connections for you.

ELLEN ZANE: That’s how it should work. If they’re reticent, it’s a red flag.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mm-hmm. Right. OK, that is excellent insight. So, any board is the big leagues, any board. These are people who have a lot of experience, who are used to the, kind of, infighting, who know how to work the dynamics. What do I need to know, how do I equip myself to be a fully participating member of a board, if I’ve never been on a board before, given that everyone else seems to know all the unwritten rules?

ELLEN ZANE: It is important to do your homework.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right.

ELLEN ZANE: And to be prepared in a … Every board, for-profit, not-for-profit, have board books, they have materials that need to be read, and you need to come prepared. You really need to do your homework, not only about the material being discussed at the board, but about the organization, about the management team, and about your colleagues on the board. Know who they are and know what their backgrounds are. And understand that you are there because you bring something. And what is it we look for in a board member mostly? It’s their judgment. So, I’ve been on a board of a semiconductor company, and I knew zero about semiconductors, and I told the CEO that. And he said to me, “Ellen, I have more engineers than you can count. What I need is someone who has good judgment, who’s run a large organization and understands the thinking that I go through when I have to make a difficult decision, versus someone who doesn’t have a lot of employees. So, what you bring, right now, is someone who’s run an organization, and I need that now for this board.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Speaking of homework, Adelle Wapnick did a ton of it after signing on to the board of a foundation. It’s called Surgeons for Little Lives, and she actually named it as a favor for a family friend. She was still in advertising then, and the pediatric-surgeon founders appreciated her strategic thinking so much that they invited her to join them.

ADELLE WAPNICK: And so I said, “Yes, I’ve got an absolute pleasure to do so.” So, I felt like I was part of the founding, but I wasn’t really. The surgeons were the ones that did the bit, but always aware that they really did need lay people, et cetera, because they, you know, their world is very specific and quite specialized.

AMY BERNSTEIN: But then, she had to become proficient in that specific specialized world of children’s emergency care for two reasons, so that she could knowledgeably market and fund-raise to the public, and so that she could develop her influence internally with a board that has now grown to 10 members.

ADELLE WAPNICK: I read a hell of a lot. I’ve learned so much about our country and what is going down and what we face in our public systems, whether it’s education, health. Also, not only did I understand more about the medical field, but I also put a lot of effort into understanding how NGOs operate, how people were doing and how they got their notions and how they connected with their donors, et cetera. So yes, a lot of reading, and then the one surgeon that’s on our board, he was a neighbor of mine down the road, and we would spend hours walking and talking. So, I think I’ve got a lot of insight through the conversations that I had more informally with him actually than a structured kind of learning process.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Another part of being a fully participating member of a board, Anna discovered, is piecing together the full picture of a conflict or proposal. From her first board meeting, she sensed that to grasp something complex, she couldn’t simply rely on the people who’d come before the board to present.

ANNA MANNING: And sometimes, people frankly think because you’re on a board, you’re automatically a bit scary, so I’ve made a point of making good relationships with staff throughout the school. I will make sure that at least one day and usually a couple of other half-days within the year, I am present in school. And so I can actually just say to the English teacher, “We’ve heard in our meeting that this particular reading scheme is going really well. Can you tell me what you think about that?” And they’ll say, “Oh, to be honest, I don’t think it’s going that well. I think we need to do a bit more training, and I need to be supported to do that.”

So then, I can go back and say, “Mmm, I’ve spoken to the English lead. This is what she thinks we need. How can we make that happen?” Then I can make sure going back into school that that actually does happen, and then I can look at the data down the line and say, Did that actually work? Was that actually useful? Having those different contacts within the organization that you have the ear of or you can listen to them and be curious, and maybe you’ll never have the full picture, right, But you can at least start to get under the skin of, Is what I’m being told right? Does it stack up?

AMY BERNSTEIN: This nosing around that Anna does exemplifies the autonomy and rationality that set women apart, according to two professors who study corporate strategy. When Margarethe Wiersema and Louise Mors interviewed directors of publicly traded companies, these are the comments they heard over and over, and I’m going to quote some from an article they wrote. Women show up “well-prepared and concerned about accountability.” Women aren’t shy about acknowledging what they don’t know. Women “ask in-depth questions.” Women modulate competitiveness. These behaviors enable boardroom discussions that are more nuanced and deeper.” Another notable observation from Margarethe and Louise: “Women appear to be less worried about how they are perceived and less likely to adhere to board norms. Instead, they want the board to make the best possible decisions, period.” So, know the norms, but know that deviating from them can sometimes be a great flex.

How much time does serving on a board take up? There’s a real range.

ADELLE WAPNICK: I probably spend about a day a month if I have to collate all the hours.

ANNA MANNING: Two working weeks, but often, stuff’s done in the evenings, it’s done in the morning before work, or it’s done at weekends.

LANI HOLLANDER: I think that maybe when I started, I was working about an hour a week, maximum. But when it was high, and I got really involved, it was maybe three hours a week.

PATTI NEUHOLD-RAVIKUMAR: So, if I’m on five boards, I have accepted the responsibility of being in five places at some point during the month. I’ve also committed to the drive time to get there, so even though the meeting might have only been an hour, it might’ve only been two hours, it was 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Here’s a new voice, Amber Hall.

AMBER HALL: When I set out a few years ago to say, at some point, I want to join corporate boards, I knew that I would have to do the things ahead that, right, to get me board ready.

AMY BERNSTEIN: She leads product design and development at her company, and she’s on the board of her graduate school program at Northwestern.

AMBER HALL: We meet twice a year. The meetings are half-day, and then there’s usually a lunch component with students to meet-and-greet. There really is no required in-between, but there have been initiatives that have come up as a result of the conversation in the meeting, where myself or other board members have raised their hand to say, “Hey, I’m willing to meet additionally to give perspective and feedback on content.” And so, you can see in the roughly 18 months feedback that I’ve provided or others have provided as, as now woven in into a syllabus or directly informs even the case studies, uh, that are being brought in. So, I would say I think to actually drive impact, you know, you likely are to contribute in some additional ways.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ellen, Amber mentioned that, from what she’s seen, to drive impact, you’ve got to do a lot more than the baseline requirement, right?

ELLEN ZANE: Mm-hmm.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, how do you get a realistic sense of the time and effort involved in being on a board, the commitment? Is it as simple as asking the recruiter?

ELLEN ZANE: The recruiters won’t know.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Uh-huh.

ELLEN ZANE: The recruiters will say to you, if there’s a recruiter, uh, they’ll say to you, “It’s four meetings a year. It’s a day-and-a-half, and you fly to whatever place, and that’s where you go.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right, right.

ELLEN ZANE: Or Zoom, they do a lot of Zoom now.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, Zoom must make, make it all much easier.

ELLEN ZANE: It does. I have to say most boards now, for-profit and not-for-profit, do a lot of their board meetings or committee meetings by Zoom. But you need to ask in the company how many committee meeting they are-are, is it the same time as the board meeting, or is it at a different time? Is it live or is it virtual? And typically, what has been the commitment for director over the course of the past year or so? On the not-for-profit side, I have found that the time commitment can almost be endless.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah.

ELLEN ZANE: As organizations, they tend to be more needy …

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yes.

ELLEN ZANE: … than for-profit boards, who have football fields of people who are, who are responsible in their job to deal with a lot of things. Whereas on not-for-profit boards, they look to their trustees or directors to have input on many more day-to-day issues. And if there’s a problem, if the roof falls off, it can suck a lot of air out of the room. And all of a sudden, you have a lot more meetings than you ever thought you would have.

AMY BERNSTEIN: But the commitment is more than the meeting. There’s all the prep, as well.

ELLEN ZANE: There’s prep, and then there’s conversation. So let’s say a not-for-profit is looking to buy a new building or to expand their organization. There’s issues about the real estate, about the tax on that real estate, about what would go into the building, what’s the strategy for it. So, it tends to creep up.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Can you set a boundary?

ELLEN ZANE: Typically, no.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Huh.

ELLEN ZANE: You can’t. If you want to be on that board, it’s the hand you’re dealt. And I have seen situations where people say, “I just don’t have to the bandwidth to do this right now.” It doesn’t happen as often as people wanting to make a difference and wanting to try to see it through if there’s a difficult or thorny issue happening at the moment.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Only one of the women we’ve heard from is paid for her board work. The rest are volunteers. That one woman is Jolene, who gets between $10,000 and $15,000 Australian Dollars annually, depending on how many meetings there are that year.

JOLENE MORSE: Having that little bit of, you know, compensation, it makes it, you know, if you’re having a hard day (laugh), and you’ve just had a really, really busy day, and you’ve got to sit through a four-hour board meeting, sometimes, it just gives you that little bit of extra motivation that you need. (laugh)

AMY BERNSTEIN: Service can be indirectly lucrative, though. For Lindsay, her free side gig opened up a money-making one, consulting.

LINDSAY SCHWARTZ: The exposure I have had and the professional development and the connections I’ve made really kind of set me up for success with being able to consult. And so that, I think, is probably more than any amount of money can help with.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Amber, who’s on the board of the grad school program, hopes her involvement might position her to get a future gig as an adjunct lecturer, and hey, maybe those connections will help her grow her career in other ways.

AMBER HALL: So, my, my network, just from a who I know across industry, is broader. There are people that work at some of the biggest corporations, biggest names culturally today on that board, not that I’ve necessarily cultivated individual relationships, but just having them at my network norms, somebody being able to reach out is great.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ellen, the moment of the offer, is that like an offer for a job? Do they say, “Here’s the job, here’s the compensation?”

ELLEN ZANE: They do, more or less, go through a term sheet. They say to you, “These are the four meetings we’re going to have this year. First, tell us, are you available?”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ah.

ELLEN ZANE: Because if these dates don’t match, the often is a killer.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Uh-huh.

ELLEN ZANE: And then they’ll say, “This is your compensation,” if it’s a for-profit board, and then they’ll say, “We’d like you to sit on the audit committee or the human resources committee. Does that match with what you would like to do?” So it very much is a bit of a negotiation, except for the compensation. No one negotiates their own package.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, so the comp isn’t negotiable, and the calendar isn’t negotiable…

ELLEN ZANE: Correct.

AMY BERNSTEIN: …what’s negotiable?

ELLEN ZANE: Almost nothing. (laugh)

AMY BERNSTEIN: Okay.

ELLEN ZANE: I said to one board that I’m on, “I’m not going to fly around the country in coach. I’m too old, I’m not going to do that anymore. I only go first class. Take it or leave it.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ah.

ELLEN ZANE: So, so you can negotiate on the fringes like that …

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah.

ELLEN ZANE: … but normally, you don’t negotiate your compensation at all, and you don’t negotiate the dates.

AMY BERNSTEIN: God, I so look forward to the day when I can look someone in the eye and say, “I cannot fly coach.”

ELLEN ZANE: (laughing)

AMY BERNSTEIN: And have them not burst into laughter.

ELLEN ZANE: Yeah. (laughing)

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, um … For people who are joining non-profit boards, we, we already know that they’re certainly not getting rich doing it. But they also take on some risks.

ELLEN ZANE: Correct.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So what risks are they taking on?

ELLEN ZANE: So, anybody can sue anybody over anything. Whether it’s legitimate or not is a different question.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

ELLEN ZANE: But board members of not-for-profits can be sued. I was in a situation myself on a university board where we felt on a sub-board, there were people who were not working in the best interests of the university. And it came to the point where we had to tell them they needed to resign or we were going to sue them personally. So, that was hard ball, but those kinds of things can happen. Employees can turn around and sue the organization, real estate people could say that they want your land, and if you don’t handle those assets correctly, they can sue the board. So people can be sued, and there are risks. In the not-for-profit world, it tends to be less, and most organizations do have indemnity insurance so that the directors or trustees are covered for their charitable activity.

So, usually on the not-for-profit side, the risk is less. I wouldn’t say it’s de minimis, but it’s less than it would be on the for-profit side. On the for-profit side, the risks are very real. One should always ask what the D&O, Directors and Officers, insurance is. Most people will say, “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got you covered.” And I usually say, “I’ll be the judge of that.” And I want to see what the language says around the indemnification, and what the limits of the liability are. That’s part of the due diligence on going on a board.

AMY BERNSTEIN: What else do you advise the women who come to you, they are considering joining a board for the first time, what do you tell them to look out for that they may not even be aware of?

ELLEN ZANE: We’ve covered a lot of it today in terms of how one participates, but two things I always mention to folks. One is remember, this isn’t just about you, as we mentioned earlier. Put yourself in the shoes of the board and think about presenting yourself in terms of what their needs are. And it isn’t about what you want. It’s about can you help them in furthering their mission. That’s one thing, to be really careful not to talk about yourself and what you want. It is important to be able to say what you want out of it, but first and foremost, it’s about the board.

And the second thing is, be patient. Normally, people who start to think about boards are smart people, they’re accomplished people. They’ve done well. And sometimes, they don’t understand why the board doesn’t come to a decision about their candidacy as quickly as they would want them to. It’s not an invitation for a job, it’s an invitation for a board, and it is different. Your bio should look different, your CV should look different for board seats than it does for a job. And people need to know that boards meet every quarter or every month, and they talk about candidates, and they talk about the profile of what they want for the candidate, and it takes a while. And I think intelligent, smart, accomplished women get, uh, frustrated, because it doesn’t happen on a timeframe as quickly as it would for a job or as quickly as they would like.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Where do people learn about the bio for a board position or the resume for a board position?

ELLEN ZANE: As you know, I do participate as program director at the Harvard School of Public Health, and what, we spend a half-a-day talking about bios and CVs. Oftentimes, recruiters can help you. Some recruiters will say, “Get your bio right in the first paragraph, because no one’s going to read beyond that.” It’s important to not be too wordy; and in your first paragraph, instead of saying how you would have had certain skills for a job, to talk about what skills you bring to a board in terms of your judgment and your savvy and your-your ability to work through difficult issues in a team with other board members.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, the best advice you could give is to talk to someone who knows how to do this.

ELLEN ZANE: Correct.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Someone who actually makes these decisions for board.

ELLEN ZANE: Correct. I had a very, very accomplished individual, who wrote a pretty good bio, but at the end, she wrote, “And I make the best brownies you’ve ever eaten.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, gosh.

ELLEN ZANE: And I said to her, “You can kind of take that out.”

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah.

ELLEN ZANE: (laugh) It’s just not going to get you anywhere.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I love dogs, and I love music…

ELLEN ZANE: Yeah, yeah.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And I have one final question. So, you’ve reached a point in your life when you think to yourself, “You know, hey, I actually would like to sit on a board.” What is my next step? I’ve had that moment of realization. What do I do?

ELLEN ZANE: Network.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Network.

ELLEN ZANE: And again, it depends what type of board you’re interested in. If it’s a community board, one needs to be involved in the community so people know you.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right.

ELLEN ZANE: It is shocking how often connections are made through networking. And once you hit a board, once you get on, it is shocking how it materializes from there because then you begin to meet other people, people know people, and that’s how it happens. It’s not a science, it’s an art.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Okay. So, if you don’t like networking and you want to be on a board, you’d better deal with that.

ELLEN ZANE: You’d better deal with that, because it isn’t going to fall in your lap. It’s highly unlikely that out of the blue, you’re just going to get a call. (laugh) It’s usually because someone knows you, respects you, thinks about what you could contribute, and then asks.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Ellen, this has been so insightful. Thank you very, very much for your time and for your wisdom.

ELLEN ZANE: Well, thank you, and I think it’s great you’re doing this for women. It’s so important. So, it’s been a pleasure.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I hope we launch a lot of board careers with this.

ELLEN ZANE: I hope you do.

AMY BERNSTEIN: If you want to meet Ellen in person, the next Women on Boards program is April 18 and 19, 2024, in Boston. It happens only once a year, and it caps the number of attendees at 50. It’s for women who have had senior operating positions and who aspire to join the board of either a private company or a large not-for-profit. It costs $3,800, and there’s financial aid available. Find a link to the application in our show notes.

I’ll leave you now with some final thoughts and words of encouragement from our volunteers.

LINDSAY SCHWARTZ: I think we always have the—and I know you guys have done podcasts about imposter syndrome—like, Am I enough? Am I, am I ready for this? And I think if I would’ve waited for me to be ready, maybe I would’ve only done this a year or two ago and that, that option may not have been there. And I wasn’t always perfect. You don’t have to be. You’re gonna make mistakes. And I didn’t feel ready. So, I think just stepping out of your comfort zone, it’s really where we grow.

AMBER HALL: I don’t know that I thought that I would have the voice I could. you know? But it was, it’s really pretty democratic, right? It’s like, “Let’s hear every point of view and perspective. There’s no hierarchy or there’s no, like, bureaucracy.” You know, being new to the board, I didn’t, I didn’t sort of have an expectation that I could throw my weight around from a perspective point of view, and I’ve been able to do that, which is kind of liberating, but also really scary to be like, Oh. Well, I can use my voice. Oh, I can be really vocal about that. Oh, I can challenge. And I think that’s been a really great experience for me. I think it’s also helped my find my voice professionally when I’m in rooms with similar titled individuals, where I’m still very junior in my career, and I, I’ve found a way to have the, have the guts and gumption to say the things.

PATTI NEUHOLD-RAVIKUMAR: I also was surprised to find out the different kinds of people who are serving on those boards. I expected that there would be a lot of people who were CEOs and presidents and lots of important titled people at these board meetings; and I have to tell you they’re really important people, but very few of them carry big titles. And it was nice to see how many people were coming from every walk of life to care about the mission of that organization.

ADELLE WAPNICK: If you look at, at being on a board, and certainly an NGO, the real thing it gives you is a sense of wellbeing. I think I underestimated that. You know, there’s a saying that happiness comes from giving to those, et cetera, and there’s a lot of literature and research on that. And I, I don’t think I’ve truly believed that, even though it’s quite a common sort of phenomenon and concept. I didn’t realize the sense of satisfaction doing something like this would give me. It was only once I entered into it, but my timing was right, and my life phase was right. I had my kids were grown up. I, my career’s extremely cycled, I’ve got the time, I’ve certainly got the capacity and energy.

LANI HOLLANDER: So, if you have that for non-profit that you’re interested in, whether or not they’ve put out a call, go ahead and send them an email, introduce yourself, and see where it goes, because it will only go to great places.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Next week…Is there any way to know for sure whether something that someone did or neglected to do is sexism? When is confronting that person worth it? And if you’ll never know what drove their actions, how do you make peace with that uncertainly. Amy G talks through these questions with two professors who study perceptions and gender stereotypes.

Women at Work’s editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoch, Tina Tobey Mack, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed this theme music. I’m Amy Bernstein, and you can get in touch with me, as well as Amy G, by emailing womenatwork@hbr.org.