The Art of Director Excellence

'How would you compare what you expected of board service versus the reality?'

'What do you want to say to lifelong learners of corporate governance?'

Compiling wisdom and practical knowledge from interviews with over 40 board directors, spanning board chairs and CEOs at public companies, private companies, and nonprofit organizations, The Art of Director Excellence, Volume 1 presents insightful answers to these questions and more. It explores a variety of important topics in corporate governance, including developing business strategy with management, navigating risks, being a board chair or committee member on different types of boards, and improving ESG and diversity, along with the many differences in how these decisions are handled in North America, Asia, and Europe.

While this book is an invaluable asset for both new and existing board directors inside the boardroom, it has use outside it as well. The real-world wisdom and experience in this volume will complement academic textbooks as shown in the appendix, which cross references commonly used textbooks to show how this book matches their contents. Academics, business school faculty and students in executive education, as well as graduate and undergraduate corporate governance classes will benefit immensely from this book. Emerging leaders in investment banking, proxy advisory, and executive recruiting will gain knowledge of the inner workings of the boardroom.

John Hotta was born and raised in Berkeley, California. He grew up among the children of professors and deans. He graduated with honors with degrees from Harvard University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and has published research in artificial intelligence that can be found in Academia.edu.

He has been a board director for multi-billion-dollar organizations since the early 2010s. After a career at Microsoft, Accenture, and AT&T, and now a board director at multiple companies, he is fortunate to have friends and colleagues who are board directors at start-ups and nonprofits as well as the largest five global public companies.

He is privileged to be able to live a purpose-driven life. He builds a culture of governance to improve better businesses and organizations and is happy to conduct training sessions for young professionals (in investment banking, proxy advisory firms, executive compensation, executive recruiting, etc.) and undergraduate and graduate students in corporate governance classes.