1. What have you found most challenging as a board member?

The biggest challenge as a board member is to provide advice not just on optimizing the present, but on creating opportunities for the future at the same time. To keep your gaze focused on two places at once.

2. How did you become a board member? Can you please briefly tell the story?

As a passionate supporter of making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, I have helped to connect people to information and to each other for innovation. This connectivity and my creation of valuable tools and information to help people innovate, change and transform makes my involvement an the advisory board of the Global Innovation Institute (GInI) a natural fit.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I begin my day by setting my intention - the overarching behavior I hope to realize during the day. I then exercise, prepare for the day, begin sharing information, attack creative-driven tasks earlier in the day, complete operational tasks later in the day as creativity wanes, and close the day with family and relaxing time before going to sleep.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

A focus on balance is the biggest leadership lesson I've begin implementing into my life approach. This means remaining humble, but owning my own space. Honoring the achievements of others, but not being intimidated by my fellow humans. We all have value, and we're all experts and talented at something! It is easy to go under or over on any dimension of our personality or work life. The key is to continuously ask - "Am I over or under right now in what I'm doing? Or am I achieving balance?"

5. What are some of the keys to doing governance well in a organisation?

Awareness, transparency, honest communication, and building trust are definitely keys to doing governance well, and require continuous effort and focus to do well themselves.

6. How do you differentiate between the role of board member and the roles of CEO or executive team member of a organisation?

A good board member strikes a balance between supporting the efforts of the CEO and the executive team, with maintaining a healthy distance in order to provide a sufficiently external perspective, and identifying the rights times and places for any coaching/mentoring that the CEO and executive team might want or need.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a board member so far?

It is important for any board member in my mind to engage as both a customer and as an evangelist. So I quickly requested to consume what the organization produces, to have the experience, so that I can better advise and to evangelize the work of the organization.