50 Essential Thought Leaders in Corporate Governance Globally

Who are the essential thought leaders shaping corporate governance globally right now?

As of June 2026, the 45 most essential voices shaping corporate governance globally are researchers, investor stewardship professionals, board effectiveness educators, ESG governance architects, and international voices who are actively publishing, speaking, and building the frameworks that will become the governance codes of tomorrow. This list moves past household names to surface the contributors whose work is directly influencing boards, regulators, and institutional investors in 2025 and 2026.

Last updated: 12 June 2026

Who this is for: Board directors, governance professionals, institutional investors, company secretaries, and executive teams who want to understand the ideas, research, and debates that are reshaping corporate governance practice right now.

Introduction

Corporate governance is not a backroom compliance function. It is the architecture that determines whether organisations create or destroy value, whether leaders are held accountable or protected from scrutiny, and whether capital markets serve long-term economic wellbeing or short-term interests. The boards, researchers, lawyers, investors, and practitioners shaping this field are doing some of the most consequential intellectual work in modern business, and yet many of their names remain largely unknown outside specialist circles.

When governance fails, the consequences are not abstract. The Enron collapse, the 2008 financial crisis, a string of high-profile CEO misconduct cases, and the ongoing global debate about whether corporations owe duties to shareholders alone or to a broader set of stakeholders all trace back to questions about how boards are structured, what they are asked to oversee, who gets to hold them accountable, and what information they are required to disclose. According to PwC's 2025 Annual Corporate Directors Survey, 55 percent of directors now believe at least one colleague on their board should be replaced, the first time a majority has indicated this in the survey's history. That figure is not merely a data point about board composition. It is a signal that the profession is grappling seriously with the gap between what boards are supposed to do and what they are actually doing.

The conversation about good governance is happening globally and at pace. Russell Reynolds Associates drew on thought leaders from 17 geographies for its 2026 Global Corporate Governance Trends report, noting that while governance is inherently local, certain pressures cut across all markets: the rise of AI oversight responsibilities for boards, shareholder activism at or near record levels in multiple jurisdictions, and board composition debates that will not be resolved by adding one more skilled director. The Diligent Institute's 2025 Transaction Readiness study, conducted with Wilson Sonsini, Oracle NetSuite, the CFO Alliance, and the CFO Leadership Council, found that only 4 percent of governance leaders globally report their GRC and financial systems are fully integrated, a finding that reveals how much foundational governance infrastructure remains incomplete even in sophisticated organisations.

I put together this list to surface 45 voices who are actively shaping how organisations think about, teach, reform, and practise corporate governance. The list deliberately moves past the most well-known household names to include researchers, practitioners, educators, stewardship professionals, and international voices who may not yet be on your radar but whose work is directly influencing the field in 2025 and 2026. Each person was selected on the basis of documented expertise, active contribution to the conversation, and genuine relevance to the governance challenges that boards, investors, and governance professionals are navigating right now.

If your leadership team could benefit from a facilitator who helps executives have the difficult conversations and make the decisions that good governance depends on at the team level, that is where Jonno White comes in. Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with leadership teams around the world on communication, accountability, and team alignment. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to explore what that might look like for your organisation.

Why does corporate governance matter? The stakes in 2026

Corporate governance defines who holds organisations accountable, who oversees strategy, and who bears the consequences when leadership fails. In 2026, the stakes have rarely been higher. Boards are being asked to oversee AI adoption, cybersecurity exposure, and sustainability reporting frameworks that are evolving faster than most directors can process.

The 2025 OECD Corporate Governance Factbook reported that women held 29 percent of board positions on average globally in 2024, up from 22 percent in 2019, but still reflecting how slowly structural change moves through board recruitment pipelines. Meanwhile, the intellectual debate about whether corporations owe duties to shareholders alone or to a broader set of stakeholders remains genuinely unresolved, with leading academics publishing on opposite sides of the argument in 2025 and 2026 with no consensus in sight.

The EU AI Act has introduced fines of up to 35 million euros or 7 percent of worldwide annual turnover for prohibited AI applications, creating a category of board liability that did not exist two years ago. Shareholder activism reached near-record levels in 2025, with 141 US campaigns tracked and a historic 56 campaigns in Japan, the highest ever recorded and representing roughly 50 percent of all non-US campaigns, according to Russell Reynolds Associates and Barclays. Boards that are not actively engaging with these dynamics are increasingly exposed.

The people on this list have chosen to engage. They have written books, built research programmes, led investor networks, trained directors, challenged regulatory frameworks, and in several cases personally contested governance structures that they believed were failing shareholders, stakeholders, or both. Following their work is not a luxury for governance professionals. It is a prerequisite for understanding what the field is actually grappling with.

If your organisation wants support not with governance codes but with the team-level leadership dynamics that determine whether governance structures actually function, Jonno White works with executives and teams on exactly that. Reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.

How this list was compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, they have made a substantive documented contribution to the field, whether through peer-reviewed research, published books, investor engagement, practitioner education, or policy advocacy specifically focused on corporate governance and board effectiveness. Second, they are actively contributing to the conversation in 2025 or 2026, not simply trading on work done decades ago. Third, the list was deliberately built to move past the most prominent household names in favour of voices the reader may not yet have encountered.

The list brings together 45 voices spanning academic corporate law, institutional investor stewardship, board effectiveness practice, ESG governance, technology governance, and governance education. No single country represents more than 35 percent of the list. The selection was guided by contribution and active engagement, not by fame.

Category One: The Academics Building Corporate Governance Theory

These are the researchers and legal scholars whose work has built the intellectual foundations of modern corporate governance theory. Their papers are cited in court decisions, regulatory frameworks, and boardrooms around the world. The debate they are having among themselves, about shareholder power versus stakeholder governance, about who directors owe their duties to, and about how ownership concentration shapes accountability, is the upstream source of the governance rules that boards operate under every day.

1. Lucian Bebchuk

The James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance at Harvard Law School, Lucian Bebchuk is the Director of the Program on Corporate Governance and the most cited legal academic in corporate governance globally. The Social Science Research Network ranks him first among all legal academics across every field for citations, a measure that reflects how thoroughly his scholarship has penetrated both academic discourse and practitioner decision-making.

His 2004 book co-authored with Jesse Fried, "Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation," remains the foundational critique of how executive pay is determined in public companies. In January 2026, he and Kobi Kastiel published "Controllers Unbound" on SSRN, continuing his sustained examination of controlling shareholders and Delaware corporate law. Bebchuk's work is rarely neutral and never inconsequential.

2. Jesse Fried

Jesse Fried is the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and one of the most prolific corporate governance scholars working today. His research spans executive compensation, corporate buybacks, insider trading, and the governance of venture-backed companies, and he contributes regularly to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. His collaboration with Lucian Bebchuk produced "Pay without Performance," the most-cited critique of pay-setting practices at public companies.

His 2018 paper with Charles Wang, "Short-Termism and Capital Flows," challenged the prevailing narrative that public company executives systematically prioritise short-term results at the expense of long-term investment, providing boards and investors with a more nuanced framework for evaluating shareholder pressure. His work continues to appear in leading law and finance journals in 2025 and 2026.

3. Leo Strine Jr.

Leo Strine served as Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, positions that together gave him more direct influence over American corporate law than almost any other individual of his generation. He is now Of Counsel at Weil, Gotshal and Manges and a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, and he continues to publish extensively on stakeholder governance, the duties of institutional investors, and the responsibilities of corporations in a functioning democratic society.

Strine is one of the most forceful advocates for the view that corporations have genuine obligations to workers, communities, and the long-term health of the broader economy. His essay "Restoration: The Role Stakeholder Governance Must Play in Recreating a Fair and Sustainable American Economy," published in the Business Lawyer, represents the fullest articulation of that view in the current governance literature.

4. Guhan Subramanian

Guhan Subramanian holds joint appointments at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, a combination that reflects his distinctive ability to bridge rigorous legal analysis with practical business strategy. His research focuses on mergers and acquisitions, takeover defences, and the governance dynamics of deal-making. He co-directs Harvard's negotiations programmes and is one of the few governance scholars who is as comfortable advising boards in live transactions as he is publishing in leading academic journals.

His work on staggered boards, co-authored with Lucian Bebchuk and John Coates, arguing that staggered boards reduce shareholder value by entrenching management, was selected as one of the year's top 10 corporate and securities articles by corporate law professors. He is an active contributor to the Harvard Law School Forum in 2025 and 2026.

5. David Larcker

David Larcker is the James Irvin Miller Professor of Accounting (Emeritus) and Director of the Corporate Governance Research Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he leads one of the world's most active empirical governance research programmes. His work with Brian Tayan and Amit Seru produces systematic evidence on board composition, executive compensation, CEO succession, and the relationship between governance practices and financial performance, grounding governance debates in data rather than assertion.

In 2023, Larcker and Tayan published "The Art and Practice of Corporate Governance," which is becoming a standard reference text for directors seeking a comprehensive, evidence-based overview of the field. In January 2026, the CGRI published a new Quick Guide to Corporate Governance under the Larcker and Tayan authorship, reinforcing their decade-long commitment to making rigorous governance research accessible.

6. Brian Tayan

Brian Tayan is a Research Fellow at the Corporate Governance Research Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where his collaboration with David Larcker has produced the most systematic empirical governance research programme in the United States. His particular contribution is translating complex academic findings into clear, practitioner-facing frameworks that directors and executives can apply directly. The Stanford Closer Look Series, which Tayan produces regularly, delivers concise governance insight in the format directors can use.

Tayan co-authored "Corporate Governance Matters," now in its third edition and widely regarded as the definitive practitioner guide to evidence-based governance. In January 2026, the CGRI published the new Quick Guide to Corporate Governance reinforcing Stanford's commitment to accessible governance research.

7. Mariana Pargendler

Mariana Pargendler is the Beneficial Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she joined in 2024 after a distinguished career at FGV Law School in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she directed the Centre for Law, Economics, and Governance. Her scholarship focuses on comparative corporate governance, bringing a genuinely global and specifically Global South perspective to a field that has historically concentrated on the United States and United Kingdom. Her work on how the Anglo-American governance model travels, distorts, or fails in different national and institutional contexts has reshaped how scholars think about governance convergence.

In February 2026, Pargendler and Elizabeth Pollman published "Engines of External Governance," forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal, examining how nonprofit organisations are becoming important external governance actors for public corporations. In May 2026, she co-authored a paper with Curtis Milhaupt and Dan Puchniak examining the contested national identity of corporations in a globalising economy.

8. Kobi Kastiel

Kobi Kastiel is Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance. His research focuses on the governance of companies with controlling shareholders, dual-class share structures, and corporate gadflies, bringing a comparative perspective rooted in Israeli corporate law alongside deep engagement with US governance debates. He has published more than 20 articles in leading US law journals.

Kastiel co-authored "The Giant Shadow of Corporate Gadflies" with Yaron Nili, published in the Southern California Law Review in 2021, the first systematic empirical analysis of how a small group of individual activist shareholders exercise extraordinary influence over the governance agendas of major US public companies. In January 2026, he co-authored "Controllers Unbound" with Lucian Bebchuk, continuing his examination of controlling shareholders and Delaware corporate law.

9. Roberto Tallarita

Roberto Tallarita is an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he joined the faculty after completing his SJD and serving as Associate Director of the Program on Corporate Governance. His research addresses the social and political dimensions of the public corporation, with emphasis on stakeholder governance, corporate political spending, environmental stewardship by index funds, and CEO political preferences.

His paper "The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance," co-authored with Lucian Bebchuk and published in the Cornell Law Review in 2020, was selected as one of the ten best corporate and securities law articles of 2021 and remains the most-cited academic critique of stakeholder governance claims. In July 2025, Tallarita published "Hohfeld in the Boardroom," forthcoming in the Yale Journal on Regulation, bringing analytic jurisprudence to bear on boardroom decision-making.

10. Mark Roe

Mark Roe is the David Berg Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and one of the most important comparative corporate governance scholars of his generation. His research examines how political economy shapes corporate governance structures differently across countries, challenging the assumption that there is a single optimal governance model toward which all markets will or should converge. His books, including "Political Determinants of Corporate Governance" and "Strong Managers, Weak Owners," are foundational texts in the comparative governance literature.

Roe contributes regularly to the Harvard Law School Forum and continues to publish on the politics of corporate governance, the governance of large US public companies, and the interaction between governance and macroeconomic stability. His perspective on how political forces shape governance choices remains essential reading.

Category Two: Shareholder Rights and Investor Stewardship

These are the voices shaping how institutional investors exercise their ownership responsibilities, how shareholder rights are protected and advocated for globally, and how the relationship between companies and their shareholders is evolving. The stewardship conversation has never been more complex, with record activism, shifting proxy advisory firm policies, and a US regulatory environment in flux following SEC changes in 2025 and an executive order targeting proxy advisor influence in December 2025.

11. Nell Minow

Nell Minow is Vice Chair of ValueEdge Advisors and is widely credited as one of the most effective shareholder advocates in the history of the corporate governance reform movement. BusinessWeek Online dubbed her "the queen of good corporate governance" in 2003, and Directorship magazine named her one of the 20 most influential people in corporate governance. She co-authored books with Robert Monks, including multiple editions of an MBA textbook on corporate governance, and served as President of Institutional Shareholder Services and as a principal at Lens Investment Management before co-founding The Corporate Library, later acquired by MSCI.

In July 2025, Minow delivered the keynote address at ICGN's 30th anniversary conference in New York, where she spoke directly to the ongoing attacks on shareholder rights and the importance of maintaining the governance infrastructure that holds management accountable to investors. In May 2026, she appeared on national television to discuss SpaceX governance ahead of its anticipated IPO, maintaining a decades-long practice of bringing governance analysis to a public audience far beyond the institutional investor community.

12. Jen Sisson

Jen Sisson is Chief Executive Officer of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), the global body whose members are institutional investors responsible for assets of around US$77 trillion. She joined ICGN in 2024 from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where she was EMEA Head of Stewardship, and before that spent four years at the Financial Reporting Council, including as Deputy Director of Stakeholder Engagement and Corporate Affairs. In her role at ICGN, she leads policy advocacy, conference programming, and standards-setting on board effectiveness, executive pay, audit quality, and investor stewardship across major global markets.

Sisson has been consistently active on LinkedIn throughout 2025 and 2026, posting substantive content on governance policy, AI in proxy voting, and the evolving relationship between companies and institutional owners. Her April 2026 post on Q1 policy engagement covered developments across multiple jurisdictions, from Korea to Canada to Denmark, demonstrating her commitment to keeping the global governance profession informed in real time.

13. Timothy Youmans

Timothy Youmans is Managing Director of Hexis Capital Management, a firm he founded to advance governance and stewardship practice in institutional investment. He brings deep practitioner experience from prior governance roles at major institutional investors, including Hermes EOS, and his current work through Hexis focuses on helping institutional investors develop more sophisticated and effective engagement frameworks, with particular attention to long-term value creation and the governance of systemic risks. Hexis is an associate member of the Council of Institutional Investors.

Youmans maintains an active presence focused on investor stewardship, governance policy, and the evolving expectations of institutional shareholders. His published 2026 Engagement Blueprint and commentary on responsible investment practice have reached practitioners across the institutional investment community.

14. Matt Fullbrook

Matt Fullbrook is a corporate governance researcher, educator, and advisor based in Toronto, where he leads Fullbrook Board Effectiveness and hosts the One Minute Governance podcast, which publishes new episodes multiple times per week and reaches governance practitioners globally. He previously served as Manager of the David and Sharon Johnston Centre for Corporate Governance Innovation at Rotman School of Management and has advised more than 250 boardrooms across North America.

In April 2026, Fullbrook announced an upcoming book co-authored with Nate Schmold, tentatively titled "The Hidden World of Boardrooms," representing his most ambitious effort to document how governance actually functions inside real organisations. His podcast Sound-Up Governance continues to produce content that challenges directors to ask better questions rather than simply learn the right answers.

15. Anne Simpson

Anne Simpson is Vice Chair at OMFIF (Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum), a role she took on in 2026 focusing on long-term asset management strategies, corporate governance, and sustainability. She is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and a Lecturer in Sustainable Finance at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Previously she was Global Head of Sustainability at Franklin Templeton, and before that served for more than a decade at CalPERS as Managing Investment Director for Board Governance and Sustainability, where she led the development of CalPERS' sustainable investment strategy across a portfolio of more than $500 billion.

Simpson's career spans the World Bank Global Corporate Governance Forum, the International Corporate Governance Network (where she served as Executive Director), the Yale School of Management, and multiple international regulatory advisory committees. Her current role at OMFIF extends her influence into the central bank and policymaker community.

16. Helena Vines Fiestas

Helena Vines Fiestas is Commissioner of the Spanish Financial Markets Authority (CNMV) and Chair of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, two positions that place her at the centre of European sustainable finance regulation and governance disclosure policy. Her work on the EU Taxonomy, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and the integration of nature-related risks into governance frameworks has directly shaped the regulatory environment in which European boards now operate.

Vines Fiestas represents a category of governance thought leader that is too often absent from English-language lists: the regulatory architect whose daily work is translating governance principles into binding obligations. Her commentary on the Taxonomy, CSRD, ISSB standards, and TNFD developments is essential reading for institutional investors, board directors, and sustainability professionals operating in or engaged with European markets.

17. Jennifer Reynolds

Jennifer Reynolds is Chief Executive Officer of Women Corporate Directors Foundation, the global membership organisation for women who serve on corporate boards and executive leadership teams, operating across more than 75 chapters worldwide. WCD is the most significant organisation globally dedicated to advancing women in board service and governance leadership, and Reynolds leads its policy advocacy, research programme, and governance thought leadership initiatives.

Reynolds has contributed commentary to Directors and Boards and other governance publications on the benefits of gender diversity, the current pace of progress, and the steps boards can take to accelerate change. Her work sits at the intersection of governance reform and gender equity in a way that addresses practical board composition challenges.

18. Dorothy Lund

Dorothy Lund is Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where her research focuses on corporate governance, securities regulation, and the political economy of corporations. Her 2021 paper co-authored with Elizabeth Pollman, "The Corporate Governance Machine," examined the ecosystem of actors, from proxy advisors to activist investors to governance rating agencies, that collectively shape corporate behaviour in ways that go beyond the intentions of any single participant. This paper has become a frequently cited reference for practitioners who want to understand why governance reform produces unintended consequences.

Lund contributes regularly to the Harvard Law School Forum, publishing on the governance implications of universal proxy rules, shareholder activism, and the role of institutional investors in corporate decision-making.

19. Elizabeth Pollman

Elizabeth Pollman is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Her research covers corporate purpose, startup governance, the governance of privately held companies, and what she calls the external governance ecosystem. Her paper with Dorothy Lund, "The Corporate Governance Machine," and her 2026 paper with Mariana Pargendler, "Engines of External Governance," both address how governance operates through mechanisms and actors outside conventional corporate law frameworks.

Pollman's research on the evolution of public benefit corporations, the governance dynamics of unicorn companies, and the historical development of corporate purpose has made her a key voice in debates about what corporations are actually for and how governance structures reflect and reinforce particular answers to that question.

20. Yaron Nili

Yaron Nili is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where his research focuses on corporate governance, board dynamics, and shareholder rights. His 2021 paper co-authored with Kobi Kastiel, "The Giant Shadow of Corporate Gadflies," provided the first systematic empirical analysis of how a handful of individual activist shareholders, each owning tiny fractions of major US companies, have come to exercise disproportionate influence over governance agendas at the largest publicly traded corporations.

Nili continues to publish actively on topics including board composition, the governance implications of universal proxy rule changes, and the evolving relationship between different categories of institutional shareholders. His work provides empirical grounding for governance debates that often proceed on assumption rather than evidence.

Category Three: Board Effectiveness and Director Development

These are the practitioners, educators, and institutional leaders focused on helping boards and directors actually perform their governance roles more effectively. Their work ranges from formal director certification programmes and empirical board research to applied consulting, accessible podcasting, and governance tools used by boards across multiple markets. The gap between good governance on paper and good governance in practice is where their contributions live.

21. Helle Bank Jorgensen

Helle Bank Jorgensen is Global Managing Director of Board Development at Board Intelligence, which acquired her previous firm Competent Boards in May 2025. She is one of the most decorated figures in global governance education, holding the Corporate Governance Lifetime Achievement Award from Governance Intelligence, the Peter Dey Governance Achievement Award from Governance Professionals of Canada, and induction into the Corporate Governance Hall of Fame. Directors and executives in more than 57 countries hold certifications from the Competent Boards programme she founded.

Jorgensen authored "The Future Boardroom: How to Transform in Turbulent Times," published in 2025. She led the Global Board Survey 2026, conducted in collaboration with InterSearch and drawing on 3,416 respondents from 84 countries, the world's largest board survey, with results presented at a governance summit in Copenhagen in April 2026. She posts actively on LinkedIn and contributes regularly to Financial Times Agenda and Board Agenda.

22. Dottie Schindlinger

Dottie Schindlinger is Executive Director of the Diligent Institute, the independent research and thought leadership arm of Diligent Corporation, the leading provider of governance, risk, and compliance software used by more than 750,000 directors and executives globally. In her role, she leads governance research, conference programming, and thought leadership on board effectiveness, cybersecurity oversight, AI governance, and ESG topics. She is co-author of "Governance in the Digital Age: A Guide for the Modern Corporate Board Director" with Brian Stafford, and co-hosts The Corporate Director Podcast.

Schindlinger's position at Diligent gives her an unparalleled empirical vantage point on governance practice across thousands of boards in multiple markets. Her commentary on AI governance, board refreshment, and the governance implications of geopolitical volatility in 2025 and 2026 has been widely referenced by directors, governance professionals, and media.

23. Amy Rojik

Amy Rojik is Managing Partner for Corporate Governance at BDO USA, where she leads the BDO Center for Corporate Governance, one of the most active governance research and advisory practices at any major accounting and advisory firm in the United States. She is a frequent author of board committee priorities guidance, audit committee practice resources, and governance trend analyses used by directors and executives across US public and private companies.

The 2025 BDO Board Survey she co-produced found that only 41 percent of directors believe their boards are highly effective. Her 2026 guidance on audit committee priorities, including on AI oversight, tariff volatility, and ERM frameworks, has been widely circulated in governance circles.

24. Paul Smith

Paul Smith is the Founder of Future Directors Institute in Australia, where he hosts the Future Directors Podcast and positions himself as "the Board Futurist." He is the author of "The Artificially Intelligent Boardroom," an accessible guide to how boards should approach AI oversight, and runs director development programmes focused on the future of board governance. His approach emphasises the humanistic and relational dimensions of effective board dynamics alongside technical competence, and he has a particular commitment to preparing younger and emerging directors for board service.

Smith's Future Directors Podcast features guests from across the governance ecosystem and continues to release new episodes in 2025 and 2026. His focus on what boards should look like in ten years provides a distinctive perspective in a governance education market that often prioritises compliance and technical knowledge over culture and future-readiness.

25. Evan Epstein

Evan Epstein is the founding Executive Director of the UC Center for Business Law San Francisco and an Adjunct Professor at UC Law San Francisco, where he created the VC-Backed Board Academy, the only significant governance education programme focused specifically on directors of venture-backed companies. He was previously Executive Director of the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and has more than 18 years of experience advising founders, executives, directors, and investors. In 2023, he was recognised in the NACD Directorship 100.

Epstein is the creator of the Boardroom Governance Podcast, which has produced more than 160 episodes reaching listeners in 169 countries. His annual year-end reviews with Joseph Grundfest, covering the major governance developments of the preceding year and predictions for the year ahead, have become a standard reference for practitioners preparing for the proxy season.

26. Susan Angele

Susan Angele is a Senior Advisor at the KPMG Board Leadership Center, one of the most active governance advisory and research functions at any professional services firm. She is a frequent author and speaker on board governance, with expertise in board oversight of strategy, innovation, technology, risk, and culture, grounded in leadership roles at Nabisco, Kraft, and Hershey, where she managed legal, compliance, crisis management, and board governance functions. She has led WCD Global Thought Leadership Commissions on visionary boards, board diversity, and board decision-making.

Angele's work at the KPMG Board Leadership Center addresses the most pressing board oversight challenges of 2025 and 2026, including how boards can effectively oversee AI investments, how compensation committees should navigate pay philosophy in an era of tariff-driven uncertainty, and how nomination committees should approach skills-based board refreshment.

27. Mark Rigotti

Mark Rigotti is Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), the premier professional body for company directors in Australia with more than 50,000 members. Under his leadership, the AICD has deepened its focus on governance for boards navigating AI oversight, geopolitical risk, and the evolving regulatory environment for Australian listed and unlisted companies. He delivered the organisational priorities address at the 2026 Australian Governance Summit, a landmark 10th anniversary event.

Rigotti's leadership of the AICD positions him as one of the most influential figures in Australian governance, with an institutional platform for convening boards, regulators, and companies that is matched by few others in the Asia-Pacific region.

28. Cordula Heldt

Cordula Heldt is Head of Corporate Governance and Company Law at the German Share Institute (Deutsches Aktieninstitut) and Head of the Secretariat of the Commission German Corporate Governance Code, giving her a central role in the ongoing development of Germany's national governance code. The German Corporate Governance Code is one of the most influential governance codes in Europe, and her work in both developing its standards and communicating their application to German listed companies makes her a critically important voice in European governance.

Heldt brings a perspective on the German supervisory board structure, the co-determination model, and the distinctive governance dynamics of family-controlled German companies that are essential for understanding governance beyond the Anglo-American context.

29. Peter Swabey

Peter Swabey is Policy and Research Director at The Chartered Governance Institute UK and Ireland (CGIUKI), where he leads the Institute's thought leadership, lobbying, and governance research functions. A Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute with more than 30 years of experience in share registration and governance, he was named a leading Board Influencer in the Governance Hot 100 in 2025.

In 2025, Swabey led the CGIUKI's research into AI adoption in governance functions, finding that 74 percent of governance professionals are concerned about the accuracy of AI-generated content in corporate reporting, despite widespread and often informal use. His commentary on the governance implications of AI in minute-taking, board reporting, and risk analysis was widely cited in UK governance circles.

30. Anne Zavarella

Anne Zavarella is a co-leader of the KPMG Board Leadership Center. A partner at KPMG with more than 25 years of experience, including service as Lead Audit Engagement Partner and SEC Reviewing Partner on some of the firm's largest and most complex global engagements, she brings practitioner depth to governance thought leadership rooted in the realities of financial reporting, audit quality, and board oversight. She is a frequent speaker on board governance and audit committee issues and has been active in WCD governance leadership commissions.

Zavarella's work in 2025 and 2026 addresses how audit committees are navigating an expanded portfolio of oversight responsibilities, from traditional financial reporting and internal controls to cybersecurity risk, AI adoption, and evolving ESG disclosure frameworks.

Category Four: ESG, Sustainability, and Integrated Reporting

These voices are shaping how boards oversee environmental and social risks, how companies disclose their sustainability performance in ways that are useful to investors, and how governance frameworks are evolving to meet the demands of a rapidly changing regulatory and stakeholder landscape. The ESG governance conversation is more contested and more consequential than at any point in the past decade.

31. Robert Eccles

Robert Eccles is Visiting Professor of Management Practice at Oxford Said Business School, Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and one of the founders of the International Integrated Reporting Council. He is the world's foremost academic expert on integrated reporting and a leading authority on how companies and investors can create sustainable strategies through rigorous ESG integration. His research examines corporate purpose, materiality, sustainability disclosure frameworks, and the fiduciary duties of board directors on ESG matters.

Eccles maintains an exceptionally active online presence, posting regularly on topics ranging from TNFD framework developments and ISSB standards to the intersection of AI and sustainability reporting. In 2025, he published an extensive research portfolio and co-authored multiple papers on climate risk disclosure and ESG integration.

32. Martin Lipton

Martin Lipton is a founding partner of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, one of the most influential corporate law firms in American history, and the inventor of the shareholder rights plan (the poison pill), a governance innovation that has shaped takeover practice and the balance of power between shareholders and management for four decades. He is an active contributor to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, publishing major governance memoranda in 2025 and 2026 that address board responsibilities in an era of AI, stakeholder pressure, geopolitical volatility, and political uncertainty.

In January 2025, Lipton published "Thoughts for Boards: Key Issues in Corporate Governance for 2025," co-authored with Steven Rosenblum and colleagues at Wachtell Lipton, an annual tradition that has become required reading for corporate directors and their advisors for more than two decades.

33. Charlotte Valeur

Charlotte Valeur is a Danish corporate governance specialist who is Founding Partner of Global Governance Group and a Visiting Professor of Governance at the University of Strathclyde. She is a former Chair of the UK Institute of Directors and has chaired three international companies and served on the boards of private and public companies in multiple jurisdictions. She has been widely described as a boardroom diversity champion for her sustained advocacy for inclusive board recruitment practices and her work on cognitive diversity in board decision-making.

Valeur brings a Scandinavian perspective to governance shaped by the Nordic co-determination model, a stronger tradition of board accountability to employees, and a generally higher baseline for board diversity than in most Anglo-American markets.

34. Lyndsey Zhang

Lyndsey Zhang is the creator and host of Boardroom and Beyond, a long-form interview podcast and platform that explores corporate governance practices, ESG strategies, and cross-cultural business dynamics with executives and governance professionals from around the world. With more than two decades of experience in corporate governance, she brings substantial practitioner depth to conversations that span governance cultures across Asia, Europe, North America, and emerging markets.

Boardroom and Beyond has built an international audience precisely because it does not limit itself to the Anglo-American governance conversation. Zhang's practice of interviewing governance professionals from markets that rarely receive attention in mainstream governance media provides a resource for practitioners who want to understand governance as a genuinely global discipline.

35. George Dallas

George Dallas is Policy Director at the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), where he works on investor stewardship standards, board effectiveness, and the governance priorities of ICGN's global institutional investor membership. With extensive experience in corporate governance research and investor engagement at major financial institutions including F&C Asset Management and Standard and Poor's, he brings a practitioner perspective to international governance standards-setting that bridges the investor community and global governance policy.

Dallas's work at ICGN places him at the centre of global governance standards conversations, where he helps translate the governance expectations of institutional investors into policy frameworks and codes that companies, regulators, and stock exchanges can implement.

Category Five: Global Voices and Emerging Perspectives

These voices are expanding the geographic, disciplinary, and demographic range of governance thinking. Corporate governance will not solve its most pressing challenges by drawing only on the same populations of directors, researchers, and practitioners that have always dominated the conversation. The people in this category are bringing perspectives, methodologies, and contexts that widen the aperture through which governance is understood and practised.

36. Dan W. Puchniak

Dan Puchniak is the Yung Pung How Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law at Singapore Management University and one of the world's foremost authorities on comparative corporate governance in Asia. He has a particular expertise in Japanese, Singaporean, and Asian corporate governance, with a sustained argument that Asian governance operates according to logic and structures that differ fundamentally from the Anglo-American model and that these differences require substantive engagement rather than dismissal as deviations from a universal norm.

In May 2026, Puchniak co-authored "What Makes a Corporation American, Italian, Chinese, or Any Other Nationality?" with Mariana Pargendler and Curtis Milhaupt, published on the Harvard Law School Forum, examining how the national identity of corporations is increasingly contested in a globalising economy.

37. Simiso Nzima

Simiso Nzima is Managing Investment Director of Investment Stewardship at CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which manages more than $500 billion in assets and is one of the most influential institutional investors in global governance practice. In this role, he leads CalPERS' engagement with portfolio companies on governance, sustainability, and systemic risks including climate change, board diversity, and executive compensation accountability.

Nzima has spoken at major governance conferences including the ICGN Annual Conference and has contributed to governance policy debates on proxy voting, ESG integration, and the governance implications of regulatory changes in the United States.

38. Rakhi Kumar

Rakhi Kumar is Senior Vice President of Sustainability Solutions at Liberty Mutual Insurance, where she leads efforts to integrate sustainability across the global enterprise. She is a globally recognised leader in ESG investing and corporate governance, previously serving as Senior Managing Director and Head of ESG Investments and Asset Stewardship at State Street Global Advisors, where she oversaw the firm's stewardship activities including the "Fearless Girl" campaign and its associated demands for board gender diversity, which had a measurable impact on board composition globally.

Kumar's career spans Moody's Investors Service, the Institute of International Finance, and multiple advisory roles. She has been recognised by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) as one of the most influential people in the boardroom, and her sustained work on integrating ESG across institutional investment continues at Liberty Mutual.

39. David Berger

David Berger is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati and President of the American College of Governance Counsel. With extensive experience in corporate governance, M&A, and securities law, he has advised boards and executives on governance challenges across Silicon Valley and beyond, with particular expertise in the governance of technology companies, dual-class share structures, and the governance implications of AI. He combines practitioner depth with genuine intellectual engagement with academic governance research.

Berger appeared in Evan Epstein's annual year-end governance review for 2025, providing practitioner perspectives on the Rome Conference on AI, ethics, and governance, the dual-class share debate, and the emergence of public benefit corporations as governance structures for AI companies.

40. Joseph Grundfest

Joseph Grundfest is the W.A. Franke Professor of Law and Business (Emeritus) at Stanford Law School, Senior Faculty at the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, and a former SEC Commissioner. He co-directs Directors' College, the nation's leading continuing professional education programme for directors of publicly traded companies, and his influence on governance education in the United States spans three decades of academic scholarship, regulatory service, and board advisory work.

Grundfest's annual year-end review with Evan Epstein on the Boardroom Governance Podcast has become a landmark event in the governance calendar. His 2025 reflections addressed AI, Delaware corporate law reform, the governance of private market growth, and the political dimensions of proxy voting.

41. Lisa Fairfax

Lisa Fairfax is Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, where her research focuses on corporate governance, securities regulation, board composition, and the governance of public companies in an era of growing social and political pressure. She contributes to governance debates on topics including diversity disclosure, the governance obligations of boards on social issues, and the evolving expectations of institutional investors in proxy voting.

Fairfax's perspective on how securities regulation interacts with governance practice is particularly valuable for practitioners navigating the post-2025 regulatory environment where SEC deregulation is proceeding alongside continued state-level and institutional investor pressure for governance accountability.

42. Brenda Kruse

Brenda Kruse is a Senior Fellow at the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the premier membership organisation for board directors in the United States, whose Directorship 100 list annually identifies the most influential people in the boardroom and in corporate governance. The NACD's governance research and director development programmes reach thousands of board directors across US public, private, and nonprofit companies.

Her work at NACD focuses on director development, board effectiveness research, and the governance tools and frameworks that help directors navigate their increasingly complex oversight responsibilities, including on AI oversight, cybersecurity, human capital, and the governance of strategic risk.

43. James McRitchie

James McRitchie is the creator and publisher of CorpGov.net, one of the longest-running and most comprehensive online resources for corporate governance research, commentary, and shareholder advocacy. He is a veteran shareholder activist who has submitted shareholder proposals and engaged directly with corporate boards on governance issues for decades, bringing a democratic accountability perspective to governance that sits outside the institutional investor mainstream.

CorpGov.net aggregates governance research, commentary, and news across the full range of governance issues from executive pay to shareholder democracy to the governance implications of new technology, and it has served as a reference point for governance professionals, researchers, and advocates for more than 20 years.

44. Usha Rodrigues

Usha Rodrigues is Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, where her research focuses on corporate law, securities regulation, corporate governance, and the governance of nonprofits and social enterprises. She brings particular perspectives on the governance implications of corporate purpose, the rise of social enterprise structures, and how securities regulation affects everyday investors rather than just institutional shareholders.

Rodrigues' perspective expands governance thinking beyond the Fortune 500 lens that dominates most academic and practitioner governance output, and provides frameworks that are relevant for the vast majority of companies that are not major public corporations.

45. Robert Pozen

Robert Pozen is Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, formerly chairman of MFS Investment Management, and a former co-chairman of the SEC's Advisory Committee on Capital Formation and Regulatory Processes. His research and teaching focus on corporate governance, financial services, and institutional investment, with particular attention to how governance structures affect long-term corporate performance and how institutional investors exercise their ownership responsibilities. He is the author of "Too Big to Save? How to Fix the US Financial System" and "Extreme Productivity."

Pozen's perspective on governance is shaped by decades of experience as a practitioner in institutional investment and as a regulator, giving him an unusually integrated view of how governance failures occur and what structural changes are most likely to prevent them.

How do the categories of governance thought leadership compare?

The five categories on this list approach governance from fundamentally different angles. Understanding which category a voice belongs to helps practitioners apply their insights in the right context.

Category	Primary Output	Most Useful For	Key Voices
Academic theorists	Peer-reviewed research, legal scholarship	Understanding why governance rules exist and what the evidence says about them	Bebchuk, Fried, Pargendler, Roe
Investor stewardship	Voting policies, engagement frameworks, regulatory advocacy	Understanding how institutional investors will actually vote and engage	Sisson, Minow, Nzima, Simpson
Board effectiveness	Practitioner tools, director education, empirical surveys	Improving how boards actually function day to day	Jorgensen, Schindlinger, Epstein, Smith
ESG governance	Disclosure frameworks, regulatory architecture, sustainability integration	Navigating evolving sustainability and climate reporting requirements	Eccles, Vines Fiestas, Dallas
Global and emerging voices	Comparative analysis, non-Western governance frameworks, democratic accountability	Understanding governance in Asian, European, or family-controlled contexts	Puchniak, Zhang, McRitchie

Notable voices we almost included

Several voices who are highly regarded in governance circles were not included in the main list by editorial choice rather than because their work is not relevant. Among practitioners, names such as Ira Millstein and Martin Conyon have made enormous contributions to governance scholarship and board advisory practice but were not included because the list prioritises voices actively posting, publishing, and speaking in 2025 and 2026 rather than long careers reviewed from a distance.

On the investor side, figures such as Hiro Mizuno, formerly of the Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan, and Tariq Fancy, whose public critique of ESG investing generated substantial governance controversy, were seriously considered. The list deliberately moved past prominent and well-known voices to surface mid-tier and practitioner voices who are doing substantive work but may not yet appear in every governance resource the reader has already consulted.

What are the most common mistakes when engaging with governance thought leadership?

The most common mistake is treating governance thought leadership as a compliance resource rather than an intellectual one. The people on this list are not primarily producing guidance documents that tell boards what rules to follow. They are generating research, arguments, and frameworks that challenge the assumptions embedded in those rules and ask harder questions about what governance should actually achieve. Treating their work as a source of policy confirmation rather than policy challenge is a significant misuse of what they offer.

A second common mistake is consuming governance research selectively in a way that confirms existing positions. The debate between Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, who argue that stakeholder governance claims are largely illusory, and Leo Strine, who argues that governance must genuinely serve workers and communities to be legitimate, is not resolvable by reading only one side. Directors and governance professionals who want to understand the actual state of governance thinking need to sit with the genuine disagreements in the field.

A third mistake is assuming that governance best practice in one jurisdiction translates straightforwardly to another. The work of Mariana Pargendler, Dan Puchniak, Mark Roe, and Cordula Heldt all makes the case that governance is deeply shaped by political economy, legal tradition, ownership structure, and cultural context. Applying US or UK governance frameworks without adaptation to markets with different institutional arrangements is a governance failure in itself.

A fourth mistake is treating governance thought leadership as a static field with settled answers. The most interesting governance questions of 2026, about AI oversight, the governance of controlled companies, the role of index funds in corporate accountability, and the validity of stakeholder governance claims, are being actively contested by some of the most rigorous researchers in the field. Treating any current answer as final is both intellectually lazy and practically dangerous.

A fifth mistake is limiting governance learning to formal programmes and recognised credentials while ignoring the real-time conversation happening through podcasts, LinkedIn posts, law school forums, and research papers. The Boardroom Governance Podcast, One Minute Governance, and the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance collectively produce more substantive governance insight on a weekly basis than most formal programmes deliver in a year.

How do you build a practical governance learning practice?

A systematic weekly governance learning practice delivers compounding returns for any director or governance professional. The gap between directors who know what happened in governance six months ago and directors who see what is coming six months ahead is not intelligence or experience. It is a regular learning practice.

1. Start with the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (corpgov.law.harvard.edu), which publishes new posts from governance researchers, practitioners, and policymakers every day. It is free, comprehensive, and navigable by topic, author, and organisation. Reading five posts per week from the Forum, selected across the categories of academic research, investor stewardship, and practitioner commentary, will give you a better overview of current governance thinking than almost any single book or programme.

2. Subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter by Evan Epstein (evanepstein.substack.com), the Diligent Institute's governance research at diligent.com/resources/research, and the ICGN's publications at icgn.org. These three sources together cover the academic, practitioner, and investor stewardship dimensions of governance in a format manageable alongside a busy board or executive schedule.

3. Follow at least 10 people from this list on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become a surprisingly substantive platform for governance thinking, particularly for the mid-tier and practitioner voices who post original content regularly. Jen Sisson at ICGN, Matt Fullbrook, Dottie Schindlinger, Helle Bank Jorgensen, Helena Vines Fiestas, and Robert Eccles are particularly active and substantive.

4. Listen to at least two governance podcasts regularly. The Boardroom Governance Podcast with Evan Epstein provides depth and long-form intellectual engagement. One Minute Governance by Matt Fullbrook provides the same quality of thinking in a format that fits into a commute. The Corporate Governance Podcast from the Chartered Governance Institute UK and Ireland provides a UK practitioner perspective. The Future Directors Podcast from Paul Smith provides an accessible and forward-looking take on board effectiveness.

5. Set a governance learning goal for yourself at the start of each year that specifies at least three substantive questions about governance practice that you want to investigate. Use the resources above to pursue those questions systematically rather than passively consuming governance content.

For teams that need help applying these governance insights at the team level, including facilitating the difficult conversations that good governance depends on, Jonno White offers Working Genius facilitation, executive offsites, and leadership development programmes. Explore more about executive team facilitation, or read the comprehensive Working Genius implementation guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

How was this list compiled?

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria: a documented substantive contribution to corporate governance through research, books, investor engagement, practitioner education, or policy advocacy; active engagement with governance topics in 2025 or 2026 rather than legacy reputation alone; and a commitment to genuine contribution to the field. The list was built to include voices from outside the Anglo-American mainstream, with representation from Denmark, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, and other markets.

Who are the most influential corporate governance researchers in the world right now?

By citation volume, Lucian Bebchuk at Harvard Law School leads the field globally, ranked first among all legal academics across all fields by the Social Science Research Network. Jesse Fried, Guhan Subramanian, Mark Roe, and Mariana Pargendler are among the most productive and widely cited researchers currently active. At Stanford, David Larcker and Brian Tayan lead the most systematic empirical governance research programme globally. For comparative governance, Dan Puchniak at Singapore Management University is essential for Asia and Mariana Pargendler provides the most rigorous Global South perspective. Roberto Tallarita and Kobi Kastiel are the most productive emerging scholars in the current academic generation.

What is the difference between corporate governance thought leaders and compliance experts?

Compliance experts help organisations meet existing governance rules. Corporate governance thought leaders question, challenge, and reshape what those rules are and should be. The people on this list are primarily in the second category. They are generating the ideas, arguments, and research that eventually become governance codes, regulatory requirements, and best practice guidance, not simply implementing them. Governance thought leaders are working ten years ahead of the compliance function, and following their work gives boards advance visibility into the governance expectations they will eventually be required to meet.

Can I hire a facilitator to work on leadership and team dynamics related to governance for my organisation?

Jonno White works with leadership teams and boards on the communication, accountability, and decision-making dynamics that determine whether governance structures actually function. While Jonno is not a corporate governance specialist, the team-level leadership work he facilitates, including Working Genius facilitation, DISC workshops, executive offsites, and leadership development, directly supports the culture and dynamics that good governance depends on. Email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org for more information.

What are the most important governance topics in 2025 and 2026?

Based on the Russell Reynolds Associates 2026 Global Corporate Governance Trends report and other current sources, five topics are dominating board governance agendas globally: AI oversight and board-level AI governance competency; CEO succession and board refreshment; shareholder activism at near-record levels in the US and Japan; the recalibration of ESG governance in a politically divided environment; and the governance implications of new US regulatory directions, including SEC deregulatory moves and executive order changes to proxy advisory firm oversight. The thought leaders on this list are actively publishing and speaking on all five.

How do I access the research and content produced by these thought leaders?

Most of the academic researchers on this list publish working papers and articles freely available through SSRN (ssrn.com) and the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (corpgov.law.harvard.edu). The Stanford CGRI publishes research at gsb.stanford.edu/cgri-research. ICGN publications are available at icgn.org. The Diligent Institute research is at diligent.com/resources/research. Podcasts from Evan Epstein, Matt Fullbrook, Paul Smith, and Lyndsey Zhang are freely available on all major podcast platforms. LinkedIn is the most accessible real-time channel for following practitioner thought leaders.

Will AI replace governance professionals and board directors?

AI will almost certainly automate significant portions of governance administration including minute-taking, compliance tracking, routine reporting, and elements of risk monitoring, as documented in research by the Chartered Governance Institute UK and Ireland finding 74 percent of governance professionals concerned about AI accuracy. However, the judgment-intensive dimensions of governance, including strategic oversight, culture assessment, CEO evaluation, and the deliberative quality of board decision-making, require human judgment shaped by experience, context, and relationships that AI systems cannot replicate. The governance professionals and directors who will thrive are those who learn to use AI tools for administrative efficiency while deepening their focus on the oversight responsibilities that genuinely require human judgment.

Final thoughts

Corporate governance is not a problem that gets solved. It is a set of ongoing tensions that get managed, sometimes better and sometimes worse, by the boards, investors, regulators, researchers, and practitioners who collectively determine what accountability looks like inside and between organisations. The people on this list have committed their careers to pushing that conversation forward, and the quality of the governance frameworks we all depend on reflects, in ways that are rarely visible, the influence of their work.

The most important thing this list can do is not confirm what you already know. It is to introduce you to one or two voices whose work challenges something you have assumed, expands your understanding of a governance question you thought was settled, or connects you to a conversation happening in a market or discipline you have not been paying attention to. The governance challenges of 2026 are genuinely difficult, and the people working hardest on them deserve more attention than they typically receive.

If this list has been useful and you want to go deeper on the nonprofit governance and leadership dimensions of these themes, see the companion post on 50 Best Thought Leaders on Leadership in Nonprofits at consultclarity.org. For the broader leadership development and team dynamics that underpin effective governance, explore the range of resources on the Consult Clarity blog.

If your organisation needs a facilitator who helps leadership teams build the accountability culture, communication quality, and decision-making discipline that good governance depends on at the team level, Jonno White is the person to call. Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold globally), and experienced executive offsite facilitator. He works with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world, and international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. Email 

If your organisation needs a facilitator who helps leadership teams build the accountability culture, communication quality, and decision-making discipline that good governance depends on at the team level, Jonno White is the person to call. He is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold globally), and experienced executive offsite facilitator. He works with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world, and international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. Through Consult Clarity he works with corporates, nonprofits and schools around the world. His podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries.

Learn more about Jonno at consultclarity.org/about or connect on LinkedIn.

Sources

PwC 2025 Annual Corporate Directors Survey, pwc.com. Diligent Institute / Wilson Sonsini / Oracle NetSuite 2025 Transaction Readiness Report, diligent.com. Russell Reynolds Associates 2026 Global Corporate Governance Trends, russellreynolds.com. Barclays 2025 Review of Shareholder Activism, published January 2026. OECD Corporate Governance Factbook 2025, oecd.org. European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (Regulation 2024/1689). Chartered Governance Institute UK and Ireland 2025 Boardroom Bellwether survey.