Board Recruitment: Lessons from 4,000+ appointments
A poorly appointed NED doesn't just underperform. They shape decisions, influence culture, and consume Chair bandwidth for years.
Recruiting a Non-Executive Director is one of the most consequential decisions a board makes. Yet even experienced boards can repeat the same errors: an insufficiently defined brief, an over-reliance on familiar networks, a shortlist that reflects past need rather than future strategy, or an onboarding process that fails to set a new appointment up for success.
Drawing on over 4,000 board placements across listed, private and not-for-profit sectors, Grace Hamza and Dan Richards from Nurole's search team will lead a focused 45-minute session examining where NED searches most commonly fall short and the standards of practice that distinguish boards that consistently appoint and onboard well.
The session will address: brief clarity, process rigour, assessment and selection onboarding
This session will include a Q&A for event-related questions.
Speakers:
Dan Richards: Dan brings three decades of leadership search, board advisory and assessment experience. He joins Nurole from Green Park where he led their Board Practice for the Private Sector team for the last 5 years. He worked there successfully on high profile assignments across multiple industries including financial and professional services, consumer, retail, media, utilities, infrastructure, housing and charity partnering with leading FTSE and global organisations and PE-backed corporates and SMEs. His background spans organisational strategy, leadership coaching, board assessment and diversity, equity and inclusion. Dan is a former lawyer and a practicing executive coach and led the talent acquisition teams for EY for over a decade and served two terms on the EY Foundation Board.
Grace Hamza: Grace started her search career at Russell Reynolds Associates, before moving to JCA Group (now Heidrick and Struggles) and then latterly leading Nurole's search execution team. She has worked on board assignments for leading Listed, Private, and Non-Profit boards, overseeing 4,000+ board appointments, and delivering many of them.