Eighteen years on a board I choose to keep serving.
Governance is where I have done my longest-running work, and the clearest test of judgment I know: patient, unglamorous, and consequential.
Virtual Enterprises International ("VE") is a national nonprofit that teaches roughly 35,000 students a year to build and run real businesses inside their schools. Students raise capital, hire, market, sell, and close the books, learning to lead by doing the actual work rather than reading about it. It is one of the few programs that treats young people as operators, and it has held my attention for eighteen years.
I joined the organization in 2008 as an in-class volunteer and student mentor. In 2010 I joined board as an independent director and have served ever since, more than a decade of that on the Executive Committee and as chair of both the Audit and Strategy committees. Board service is not a title I collect. It is where I have learned, over nearly two decades, what it takes to steward an organization through change without losing what makes it work.
Visit Virtual Enterprises International →What I have been accountable for.
As Audit chair, I implemented an enterprise risk management framework and established board-level discipline over financial controls, oversight, and organizational accountability.
As Strategy chair, I led development of a multi-year strategic plan with the executive team, established a living document to guide the direction for the organization's next stage of growth.
I helped the organization navigate multiple executive director transitions and financial gaps that required direct board intervention, holding continuity through change.
Most recently, I helped shape an AI-enabled approach to how student work is evaluated at scale, extending the same decision-systems thinking I bring to my operating work.
Beyond formal governance, I have spent years as an ongoing coach and sounding board to the organization's senior leadership, including its executive director and CFO. That work is embedded in how the team frames growth, sets goals, and measures outcomes, and the leadership counts it among the most lasting impact of my service.
I am here to build lasting relationships and to serve other people. That is the honest answer to why I do this, and it is why I have stayed on this board for eighteen years.
People learn to lead by building and running something real, with consequences. VEI gives roughly 35,000 students a year that experience, and the work compounds in a way almost nothing else I do does.
Governance done well is quiet. It shows up as an organization that holds together through hard transitions and makes better decisions than it did before. Service usually looks like that: unglamorous, patient, and worth doing.
If your board or team could use this, let's talk.
I take on a small number of board seats, advisory roles, and speaking engagements where the work is real and the people are serious about building something that lasts. If that sounds like your organization, I would like to hear from you.
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