Ask a Chief of Staff: Anatomy of a Great Board Meeting with Edward Norton
🗓️ Join us on May 28th!
Board meetings are broken. Board prep is exhausting, and the meetings are worse.
So what does it actually take to flip the script — to run a board meeting that's worth everyone's time, from prep through follow-through?
We're sitting down with Edward Norton, co-founder and Head of Strategy at Zeck, the board management platform, to break it down. Edward has spent years in boardrooms seeing firsthand what makes meetings effective and what causes them to fall flat — experience that ultimately led to the creation of Zeck. He's also a serial founder, investor, and yes, one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation.
For Chiefs of Staff, board meetings are often our terrain: we build the deck, run the prep, manage the cadence, and own the follow-through. This session is built for the people who make board meetings happen.
💡 Here's what to expect:
The Anatomy of a Great Board Meeting — Edward shares a tactical, tangible breakdown of what separates a great board meeting from a broken one. Expect sharp opinions and ideas you can put to work in your next prep cycle.
Fireside chat with Sarah Agopian-Khalifé — Ask a Chief of Staff Community Manager Sarah continues the conversation with Edward, asking a few follow-up questions, layering in the CoS lens.
Open Q&A — Bring your questions about board prep, board dynamics, working with your principal on board strategy.
Close & next steps
You'll leave with a clearer picture of what makes a board meeting actually work, and concrete ideas for how to make your next one count.
🎙️ More about the Speaker
Edward Norton is an acclaimed actor (Primal Fear, American History X, Birdman, Glass Onion) with three Academy Award nominations and a parallel career as a serial entrepreneur and investor.
In 2020, Norton co-founded Zeck alongside his former CrowdRise co-founders, Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. Zeck is a modern, cloud-based board meeting and governance platform designed to replace static decks with a more interactive, decision-focused experience. Norton serves as Head of Strategy. In April 2024, Salesforce Ventures led a strategic investment in Zeck, with Khosla Ventures and Breyer Capital co-investing.
Norton's other ventures include CrowdRise (acquired by GoFundMe in 2017), EDO — a leading measurement provider for ad-supported streaming — and Stax Engineering, a mobile emissions capture company serving California ports.
Sarah Agopian-Khalifé helps people make the most out of being together. She's currently the Community Manager at Ask a Chief of Staff, where she's building a home for Chiefs of Staff to learn, connect, and grow alongside their peers. She spent the first part of her career in nonprofits, fundraising millions for breast cancer and cerebral palsy research, before pivoting to startups for more on-the-ground impact — designing accelerators and joining an early-stage group coaching company. Today, she's a portfolio careerist working at the intersection of community, facilitation, and experience design.
🤝🏻 More About Zeck
Zeck is a modern, cloud-based board meeting and governance platform designed to replace static decks with a more interactive, decision-focused. It helps leadership teams and Chiefs of Staff cut board prep time, align stakeholders before the meeting, and shift time in the room toward real decisions.
Zeck was built after years of experiencing how broken the process had become. Late-night slide revisions. Disconnected feedback. Meetings spent presenting instead of discussing. As both operators and board directors, the team set out to rebuild the system from the ground up.
Zeck is co-founded by Edward Norton, an award-winning actor, filmmaker, and entrepreneur, alongside Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe, founders of Moosejaw (acquired by Walmart) and CrowdRise (acquired by GoFundMe).
You likely know Edward from his day job, but he has also founded multiple companies and serves on corporate and nonprofit boards. As he puts it: “Those of us who’ve started companies or sat on boards felt like the dynamic of the board meeting was broken.”
Today, Zeck helps thousands of CEOs, Chiefs of Staff, and leadership teams run more prepared, more strategic, and far less miserable board meetings.
Learn more at https://www.zeck.app/
💜 Ask a Chief of Staff
Ask a Chief of Staff is a premier executive search and career development platform dedicated to placing top-tier Chiefs of Staff and empowering professionals in strategic leadership roles. We serve ambitious professionals and high-growth companies by offering executive recruiting, mentorship programs, and career resources tailored to Chiefs of Staff. By addressing the lack of structured career paths for this role, we provide guidance, connections, and opportunities that accelerate leadership development and organizational success.
Learn more at askachiefofstaff.com.