Acquiring a Seat on a Private Company Board

Overview

How does one acquire a seat on a private company board?  How does a CEO build the company board?  Join us to explore these questions and bring a few questions of your own.  

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$25   Members and Guest of Members
$35   Non-Members  

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Panelists

Mr. McCarthey has extensive public, family, private and non-profit board director expertise. He holds ISS certification; was a Private equity CEO; is a venture capital managing partner and was Senior VP at Coca-Cola Company in Global Commercial/Customer Strategic Planning.
CEO Leadership Development began as a Past Chair with Vistage International. As an author he published books on Sales Leadership and High Impact Boards entitled “The Art of Sales: Inside the Minds“ and “High Impact Board Engagement: Three Critical Capabilities at the Forefront of Corporate Governance.” He does Public Speaking on Leadership and Relationship Development.

Current board roles include Hamra Enterprises, Saulsbury Industries, Interra International LLC., and is CEO of Shelty-Viking Capital Group LLC. The board roles held are Governance Committee Chairman, Audit Committee Member, Strategy Chair and Audit Committee.
Eric is a NACD Board Leadership Fellow. He holds an EMBA degree from the University of Southern California and BASc, EPOB Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Diverse and deep business model experience includes:

1. CPG, franchise and retail systems
2. Agricultural infrastructure and global supporting ecosystem
3. Distribution and transportation
4. E-commerce technology and go to market operations
5. Energy development across both traditional fossil and new emerging clean.
6. Business services and multiple technology platform support system

Industry Expertise: Retail, Distribution, Energy, Marketing Services, E-Commerce, Agriculture and Food Trade, Healthcare and Business Services.

Reporting directly to the Founder & CEO, Henri Ward has had a broad range of responsibilities as Chief Operating Officer at B-Direct, the nation’s first U.S.-based but African-centric corporate board preparedness and board search company specifically designed to connect U.S. Black talent and multinational corporations to high growth businesses on the African continent. Since its founding in 2020, Ward has served as one of three top company executives. His responsibilities range from corporate strategy and new product introduction to sales and overall P&L ownership.

Ward’s professional background is very deeply rooted in growing domestic and global businesses primarily in the technology industry. Prior to B-Direct, Ward served as General Manager, Vertical Markets at Fiserv Inc., a global fintech company where he held overall responsibility for the strategic, commercial and operational initiatives of a $100M technology line of business. Ward also served as Head of Product Management, Global Consumer Solutions at Equifax Inc., where he led global strategic planning, revenue generation, new product development and product/platform life cycle management for the $400M fintech business unit. Prior to Equifax, Ward served as Global Vice President, Verint Systems Inc. with P&L leadership of Verint’s $700M Customer Engagement business unit.

In addition to his P&L, strategy and product management background, Ward also has extensive board experience. For many years, he served on the Advisory Board of the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Salvation Army where he and other sr. executives and c-suite business leaders provided guidance and support to the Salvation Army executive leadership team. Ward is also a Charter Member of the Atlanta Chapter, Private Directors Association and most recently served on the Membership Committee.
He holds a BSBA in Information Systems from Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH and a Lean Six Sigma, Black Belt certification from General Electric Co.

Kristin R. Adams is Executive Vice President Aon Risk Services South, Inc. (Atlanta, Georgia), responsible for business development on behalf of Aon Risk Solutions. Kristin manages her own client relationships with many of the most prominent organizations across the US including private equity, REITs, financial institutions, public companies and law firms. Kristin has been with Aon for 25 years. Prior to her current role, she served in Mergers & Acquisitions in New York, providing risk and human capital-focused due diligence support to financial and strategic buyers and sellers of companies; Capital Markets in San Francisco, creating specialized risk transfer solutions in the capital markets including weather hedging and dual-trigger contingent capital products for her clients; Corporate in Chicago that structured a firstof-its-kind LP asset securitization for Aon Corporation, providing investment liquidity and overall enhanced risk-based capital treatment.

She attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Law, earned a JD, and BA in Journalism and Political Science.

Currently board service includes three private company boards, Georgia Primary Bancshares as Board Member on the Audit and Loan Committees, Hire Ground as Board Member and Co-Chair, and HUB404 as Board Member. Not for profit boards include The Alliance Theatre as Board Member and Corporate Committee Chair, The Woodruff Arts Center as the Alliance Theatre Development Committee Advisor to the WAC Board of Trustees and the Buckhead Coalition, Director, Executive Committee, Finance and Operations Committee.

Former board experience: OnBoard (f/k/a Board of Directors Network), Board Member, Committee Chair and Advocate 2010-2020, Atlanta Women’s Foundation, Board Member 2015- 2021, Development Committee Chair and Board Vice Chair 2019-2021

Recent Speaking Engagements: Atlanta Women’s Foundation, Board Member 2015- 2021, Development Committee Chair and Board Vice Chair 2019-2021 Business Outlook in the Face of the Mid-Term Elections, CFO Forum Atlanta, October 2022 Emerging Trends with Cyber Security Threats: Effective Tactics to Assess, Prepare and Respond, Troutman Pepper & Aon Cyber Solutions, October 2022 Evolving in a Digital Marketplace, Women in Insurance Annual Conference.

Moderator

Greg Esslinger recently spent eight years as the Americas head of Control Risks’ Compliance, Forensics and Intelligence consulting business. Reporting to the CEO and with full P&L responsibility, he grew that business from a small group of 25 consultants with less than $10 million in revenue to a team of more than 120 people across nine offices in six countries generating $35-40 million annually. He also served as chair of the global Strategic Development Committee where he led strategy and growth for a group of regional heads that oversaw a $90 million budget across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

A former practicing lawyer and a former Special Agent for the FBI in the International Counterterrorism Division, Greg spent nearly 20 years as a global regulatory risk, compliance, investigations and crisis consultant. His industry experience crosses a wide variety of sectors including healthcare and pharma, architecture and engineering, energy, financial and nonprofit. As a consultant he traveled to more than 30 countries and distinguished himself by starting the Anticorruption, Compliance and Ethics practice as a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting. There he developed a technology-based solution to manage third party risk; launched the first ever anti-corruption conference in Lagos, Nigeria; built the first compliance program for one of the largest companies in the world; led one of the largest ever corporate bribery investigations in China and was appointed by the SEC as the compliance monitor for a large multinational pharmaceutical company.

With a natural penchant for B2B sales, marketing and brand development, Greg offers a wealth of international business operations, strategy, risk management, executive leadership, public speaking and mentoring experience. He has worked extensively advising boards and C-suite executives in response to high-stakes regulatory enforcement actions, conducting internal investigations and developing business-centric compliance and internal controls measures to address various types of organizational risk. Greg has appeared numerous times before federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies on behalf of clients and has been a frequent speaker at industry events and on live national television.

Currently, Greg is a member of the Board of Directors for The Village Ltd., a nonprofit focused on developing and delivering inclusion, belonging and equity educational materials for primary and secondary schools. This echoes his passion for diversity in the workplace: at Control Risks, Greg became the first global executive sponsor for DE&I, established the first DE&I committee, brought gender diversity to the talent acquisition process and launched an internship program focused on HBCUs. He also spends significant time advising nonprofit CEOs and boards on governance, strategy, change management, branding and talent acquisition. Greg is an empathetic leader and lifelong learner, having recently completed a self-funded course at Wharton entitled Corporate Governance: Maximizing Effectiveness in the Boardroom and multiple certificates in nonprofit finance, governance and fundraising.

Greg earned a B.A. cum laude in English Literature from Sewanee and a J.D. cum laude from Georgia State University College of Law, and is an active member of the Private Directors Association. He currently lives in Atlanta, GA. [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregesslinger 

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