A Board resume is an ongoing, dynamic document. When preparing your Board resume you need to keep it current and keep it fresh. To do this, you need to ask for honest and candid feedback from your own personal advisory board. Next, you need to decide on whether you will prepare your Board resume on your own or if you will engage a firm to help. Having an outsider’s input can help you hone in on your unique value proposition and help develop what skills you want to highlight. Putting together a Board resume is an important step in any Board journey, and that’s why at Women Get [...]

Getting started on your board journey includes building a board profile. So, how does one go about it?  It starts with asking yourself what your value proposition is, and what unique skills and experience you bring to a board. (Learn more about How to prepare yourself for Board roles with Women Get On Board’s Getting Board-ready workshops!) What is your unique value proposition? Boards are made up of a diversity of thought with members bringing different culture, experience, gender, ethnicity, age and geographic representation. So, what is it that you can bring to an already diverse board? What is your unique board value proposition? Think of it like [...]

What is the best way to prepare yourself for Board roles? Executives who want to make the transition to corporate director often need advice on how best to set up and prepare for their board journey. The first step is to understand your role on a board, which I outlined in my previous post here. Once you have an understanding of your role, begin your Board journey by leading and serving on Not-for-Profit Boards. Getting Involved in Your Community by serving on a Not-for-Profit is a great way to give back and to meet other community business leaders. Lastly, there are different types of Not-for-Profit boards, so you [...]

There are two roles you must play on a Board, one is Oversight and the other is Value-add.  I will highlight both roles with an extract from a chapter that I co-authored with Donna Price in 2008’s Entrepreneurial Effect by James Bowen and Glenn Cheriton, titled Corporate Governance-Directors of Emerging Companies. (To promote understanding of a director’s role on a board and how to prepare for board opportunities, and as a co-founder of Women Get On Board, I am co-facilitating a series of Getting Board-ready workshops from October to December 2015. Learn more about them here: http://womengetonboard.ca/workshops/.  Hope to see you there!) The Oversight role on a Board [...]

Getting yourself board-ready is a journey where you need to be realistic in your skills, experience and value you bring to a board. You also need to be mindful that it is a very competitive marketplace. There is an over-supply of qualified corporate directors for a limited supply of available corporate board seats. So, how do you start your journey to get board-ready so you can compete for a corporate board seat?  The first step is to ask yourself these 10 questions to determine your readiness for leading and serving on a corporate board. 10 Board-Ready Questions 1. Do you have a minimum of 10 to 15 years of [...]

I grew up in a family of giving; it has always been a part of who I am and what I do. To that end I strive to live by this famous quote:  "We make a Living by what we get, but we make a Life by what we give." (To my dear sons, I hope you give generously and receive graciously!) When reading Adam M. Grant's book, Give and Take, on the topic of giving, I was inspired to explore the social style of giving; how when one gives generously they get far more than what they give.  According to Adam M. Grant there are three styles [...]