(0:00) Intro to this episode

(2:52) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(3:39) Start of interview

(4:18) Keith Giarman's origin story. About DHR Global

(9:33) Tony Abate's origin story. Current boards: Wolfspeed, GTT Communications, Mitel, and Tacora Resources.

(23:52) Turnaround Board Playbook. Three phases: 1) Fix the balance sheet; 2) Turnaround strategy, and time to turn to the income statement; and 3) Exit the business.

(28:50) Private Equity Board Structure. It is all contextual.

(33:40) Compensation in PE boards.

(31:15) What Makes Boards Effective, from Tony based on his chairmanship experience. Execution vs process. *Execution: 1) Skill Set Distribution ("Three is too few, five too many."), 2) Relevance of that skill set distribution to the situation at hand, and 3) Willingness to engage with the management team between board meetings ("the most important" goes to board culture).

(38:34) Building the Board Agenda, from Tony: Tight agenda in three buckets: 1) Decisions needed now, 2) input without a decision, and 3) FYI. Most boards get stuck on FYI and never reach the real decisions. Then 40 to 50% of the deck should be standardized financial and operational KPIs (flag only what's changing), one rotating deep dive, and executive sessions with and without the CEO.

(42:53) LLCs and Governance Dynamics in PE.

(45:52) AI and Board Talent Demand. "Matrix management"

(50:36) Underestimated Governance Risks. From Keith: for board members: "Are they aligned? Are they courageous? And are they adaptive?" From Tony: "The board should talk about the what, not the how." Difference between supervising and execution. Caveat: some PE firms are very prescriptive.

(56:23) Founder-Led or Board-Led companies.

(1:00:16) What are the 1-3 books that have greatly influenced your life: 

(1:05:00) Who were their mentors, and what they learned from them.

(1:09:07) Quotes they think of often or live their life by.

(1:11:17) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that they love.

(1:12:21) The living person they most admire.

Keith Giarman is a Managing Partner of the Private Equity Practice at DHR Global, and Tony Abate is an experienced board chair, director, investor, and operating executive.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro *Reference to the Boardroom Governance Summit at Limerick Lane Cellars, Healdsburg, California (Aug 26-27, 2026) 

(2:12) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(2:59) Start of interview. 

(4:00) Origin Story of Emily, and Stewardship 

(6:15) From Engineer to CEO 

(7:14) Companies that she led: Elo Touch Systems (97-00), Capstone Turbine (02-03), Apexon (04-07) and NovaTorque (09-17).

(9:50) Changing geopolitics of manufacturing

(10:49) First Boards and Public Company Lessons (first board experience in Japan) "The soft skills are the hard part to do."

(15:48) On serving in private VC-backed boards. "If you know one board, you know one board. I mean, they are all so different."

(22:43) On serving in non-profit boards. "It's one of the best possible ways to get governance experience."

(26:20) CEO Mistakes

(32:03) Board Succession for leadership and skills.

(35:33) Board Evaluations Done Right 

(37:41) What Makes Great Directors. *reference to Leading Edge Stewardship, by Linda Riefler and Mayree Clark (Stanford Women on Boards). "Asking the right question, at the right time, in the right way."

(39:57) AI and the Boardroom.

(46:16) Innovation Versus Oversight. "The goal is informed oversight without operational interference"

(49:34) Teaching Governance to Stanford Students 

(52:17) Boards need to have a long-term orientation in this short-term world.

(52:34) Books that have greatly influenced her life:

(54:12) Her mentors. "[T]hey told me things I needed to hear in a way that I could hear them because it's easy to get defensive."

(55:38) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.' by Margaret Mead.

(56:43) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves. 

(57:30) The living person she most admires in governance: Bob Joss.

Emily Liggett serves on the boards of Ultra Clean Technology and Materion Corporation. She also serves as Lecturer at Stanford GSB, where she teaches corporate governance and board leadership.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro, *Reference to the Boardroom Governance Summit (Aug 26-27, 2026) 

(2:42) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(3:28) Start of interview. *Reference to prior episode with Greg (E136) from 2024.

(5:14) Market Boom and AI Supercycle

(6:14) AI Is Changing Everything

(9:06) How does a VC use AI (venture business: sourcing, selection, and stewardship)

(12:13) Cloud and Startup Costs, rise of seed rounds and institutional angel investors

(15:13) JSV Launchpad, a 10-week, in-person summer program in SF from JSV for early-stage student AI founders 

(18:50) SaaSpocalypse Debate and AI Washing (reference to the Albert Saniger / Nate Inc case)

(21:33) Growth Metrics Rewritten (when Anthropic has grown 80x year over year) "the best solution for high prices is high prices"

(24:20) Sorting SaaS Risks

(27:30) Defensibility in the AI Era: 1) Network effects, 2) Systems of record, and 3) Regulated workflow.

(29:52) AI impact to companies: 1) Are the foundation models existential? 2) How much have you incorporated AI into your platform or your product? 3) How important is AI within your product? and 4) How much have you integrated AI into your operations? "In a world where building software is easy, one of the things that we're already seeing within our portfolio, and I think we'll see more of this, is... horizontal expansion (expanding to adjacent businesses)."

(32:33) AI, Jobs, and Layoffs (*reference to this FT article: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?)

(38:28) Private Markets and IPOs. Liquidity in venture ecosystem (M&A and private equity).

(42:02) SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs

(45:18) Data Centers and Backlash "It's easy to demonize"

(46:16) Regulation and Global Competition "AI right now has become a great bogeyman for both sides."

(50:14) Board Strategy for AI

(52:12) On Kirkland & Ellis' $500m bet to develop its own AI technology

Greg Gretsch is a Founding Partner and Managing Director of Jackson Square Ventures, an early-stage VC firm based in San Francisco. Greg has more than two decades of experience in VC and five of his early-stage investments have gone on to exits or valuations above $1 billion.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro

(1:47) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:34) Start of interview 

(4:12) Laurie's origin story

(6:19) From Management Consulting (Accenture) to Product Innovation (Visa). "What they all had in common was that I got to start with a blank sheet of paper."

(8:52) Toward Venture Capital and Board Governance. From Sun Microsystems to Packet Design to investing.

(13:07) How she got interested in board governance. Her first board experience with Interactive Investor (cross-listed in US and UK)

(14:27) Joining Playground Global in 2019

(16:16) Tesla’s Day-Zero Board

(20:15) Zoox and Autonomous Ambition

(24:11) Boards Across Company Types: VC-backed companies and family businesses. Example of her time as board member at Bose.

(27:57) Lessons from Church and Dwight. The roles of M&A and marketing.

(30:37) Her co-authored paper on The Artificially Intelligent Boardroom (Stanford GSB) 

(35:30) Private Markets and Trillion-Dollar Valuations

(40:28) The role of private equity in this environment, and its distinctive board structure.

(42:55) Geopolitics and Supply Chains

(47:20) Cybersecurity Oversight in the AI Age

(50:45) Courage in the Boardroom. “As board members, we have to be courageous enough to ask the right questions at the right time, rather than sit back and hope everything will be okay.”

(52:22) Books that have greatly influenced her life:

(54:14) Her mentors:

(56:49) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by. "It is easy enough to be pleasant, when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is one who will smile, when everything goes dead wrong." Ella Wheeler Wilcox

(57:32) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves. Dancing, after following research from Kelly McGonigal. Hummingbird feeders.

(59:39) The living person she most admires: her husband, Ben Lenail.

Laurie Yoler is a venture capital investor at Playground Global, former board member at Tesla and Zoox, and a director or advisor to more than 25 boards. She currently serves on the boards of Church & Dwight and the NACD Northern California Chapter.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro

(1:34) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:21) Start of interview 

(3:20) Marie's origin story

(5:19) Career Path in Law and Governance. Her time at HP and Agilent Technologies.

(7:50) Transition to eBay 

(9:57) Shareholder Activism and eBay's Story *CNBC clip with Ryan Cohen

(14:42) Governance Roles and Board Memberships

(16:50) Her teaching positions on the role of the General Counsel 

(18:57) Chair and Director Succession

(23:37) On separating Chair and CEO roles

(25:44) Governance in Private Companies

(30:40) The Impact of AI on Governance. She thinks of it in three buckets: 1) Customer/revenue opportunity; 2) from an enterprise wide standpoint; and 3) AI risks

(34:36) Questions board members should ask management regarding AI opportunities and challenges

(38:09) Energy Sector and AI *Marie serves on the board of Portland General Electric

(43:10) Geopolitical Challenges in Business *reference to Meta-Manus China breakup

(45:24) Building Trust in the Boardroom

(48:30) Books that have greatly influenced her life:

(50:32) Her mentors

(52:38) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by.

(54:00) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves.

(56:00) The living person she most admires: Lisa Su.

Marie Oh Huber has over 30 years of experience of strategic business, legal, regulatory and public policy experience in large global public technology companies, including eBay, Agilent Technologies, and HP. She currently serves on the board of Portland General Electric

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro

(1:24) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:11) Start of interview *reference to the BRI from LCDA

(3:54) Eddie's origin story

(6:27) Eddie's investment focus 

(7:44) The rise of AI and its impact on him

(9:06) Eddie’s roles in investment over the past 35 years (as GP and LP).

(8:32) His current endeavors: 1) Board member in mutual funds (Calvert Funds); 2) Independent director and Chair elect of Global X Venture Fund; 3) Chief Strategy Officer at Leadview Capital; and 4) Advisor at Bullpen.ai

(19:38) Dealing with AI hallucinations (e.g. Sullivan & Cromwell example)

(23:13) Convergence of AI, ESG, and Governance: "It's dramatic"

(25:00) "Stocks will be tokenized, markets will be much more liquid." "Wall street is trying to put liquid claims on illiquid investments" *WSJ Nasdaq's Plan for 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading

(31:20) Geopolitical Challenges in Investing and for Boards. *Example of Meta-Manus breakup. "We live in a selectively connected world."

(34:00) Politicization and social issues in corporations. Board Adaptation to Rapid Changes

(38:19) AI and Audit Committee Responsibilities

(40:30) Bridging the AI Knowledge Gap "Boards are under prepared." *References to Stanford GSB cases: Netflix Approach to Governance and the Artificially Intelligent Boardroom

(46:10) Changing Dynamics in Board Practices. "It's a matter of time before companies like SAP or Microsoft move into corporate auditing, or Amazon starts offering mutual funds. The incumbents just don't see it coming."

(47:10) Power Laws and Growth in Private Markets.

(50:31) Books that have greatly influenced his life:

(52:56) His mentors.

(53:56) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives her life by: "Prioritize by impact" "Recognize the good in everyone"

(55:10) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves: obsession with curating music playlists.

(55:06) The living person he most admires: Bono and Bad Bunny.

Eddie Ramos is the Chief Strategy Officer for Leadview Capital. He is also currently on the board of Morgan Stanley’s Calvert Mutual Funds and Global X Venture Fund, serving as the Chairman of the Audit Committee for both.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro

(1:36) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:23) Start of interview

(3:11) Steve's origin story

(5:05) His Journey into Journalism

(6:02) The Rise of Governance Movement

(7:00) Transformation of Board Accountability. Reference to the 1992 Board coup at GM and other historical changes.

(10:24) Communication in Governance

(12:25) Establishing Gladstone Place Partners

(15:00) Crisis Management and Board Roles

(17:34) The Importance of Investor Relations

(20:40) Current Landscape of Shareholder Activism. 

(25:14) The Snap activism case. The impact of activism on companies with dual-class share structures.

(30:12) M&A Transactions, Delaware and DExit. The impact of Twitter's acquisition by Elon Musk. Reference to E201 with Leo Strine.

(34:47) The Ongoing Cybersecurity Challenge. Reference to Anthropic's new Claude Mythos. 

(37:51) The Impact of AI on Governance. The case of Anthropic's dispute with the Pentagon. *Reference to evanepstein.substack.com and E204 with Eric Ries.

(42:50) AI's PR problem. The challenge of building data centers. The geopolitics of AI.

(46:30) Impact of job firings, due to AI?

(49:53) The state of ESG and DEI in 2026.

(52:05) Books that have greatly influenced his life:

(53:10) His mentors. 

(54:00) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives her life by (Grateful Dead lyrics)

(54:24) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves

(55:06) The living person he most admires

Steven Lipin is founder and CEO of communications advisory firm Gladstone Place Partners and a trusted advisor in the field of strategic, financial and corporate governance communications.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro, *Reference to prior episode with Ben Means (E105)

(1:36) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(2:23) Start of interview. 

(3:39) The Premise of his new book Family Business Law

(6:48) Understanding Shareholder Oppression

(10:17) The Three-Circle Model Explained

(13:34) The Personal Impact of Family Business

(16:24) Boards in Family Businesses

(18:09) The Importance of Voice

(20:47) Overlapping Family and Business Law *Reference to my episodes on HBO's Succession

(24:36) The Succession Challenge (transference to next generation or sale of company)

(28:18) Fiduciary Duties and Governance. *Reference to the Market Basket litigation

(34:03) Family Protocols: A Solution?

(35:13) Societal Impact of Family Businesses *Reference to E204 with Eric Ries

(38:24) Innovations in Governance and Family Businesses. Pros and Cons of LLCs

(42:56) Features of a New Family Structure

(46:05) The Rise of Family Offices

Benjamin Means is a Professor of Law, the John T. Campbell Chair in Business and Professional Ethics, and Director of the Family & Small Business Program at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro

(1:40) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:26) Start of interview

(3:19) Eric's origin story

(5:00) The Lean Startup Journey

(10:23) About The Long-Term Stock Exchange

(18:00) Governance and Eric's New Book Incorruptible

(24:14) On Governance in Startups vs. Public Companies and so-called "best practices." "One of the key ideas in the book is that it's always too early until it's too late."

(28:37) Why the title Incorruptible. How to become an incorruptible force for good in the world.

(33:15) The board members' sacred obligation. The call for a director's oath.

(34:40) The concepts of Financial Gravity and Career Equity. "The force that no one controls, but everyone obeys." "The number one thing CEOs notice before and after the IPO: every employee is looking at the stock ticker every day."

(41:38) Innovations in AI Governance (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc) "A new old idea"

(44:36) On the Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) structure. 

(46:25) The Case for New Governance Structures. "The shareholder primacy debate has become completely divorced from the actual material interests of shareholders." The example of Costco.

(52:45) On Dual-Class Share Structures. "I don't think emperor for life is a great political system" "[The] standard governance [model] has to be really bad for dictator for life to be an improvement." "I'm interested in trying to create what I call the architecture of institutional longevity. What would it take to create organizations that can endure for decades or even centuries? In order to do that, by definition, we have to find ways to encode the ethos."

(56:51) Mission-Locked Constellations. "Structures that involve many different entities that are locked together to act as a bit of an immune system against corruption." "The spiritual holding company: a constellation of multiple entities where some entity has the responsibility of being at the center to provide basically mission protection as a service to the for-profit entities under its purview."

(1:01:07) The Novo Nordisk story. *reference to the Acquired podcast episode.

(1:07:10) Books that have greatly influenced his life:

(1:12:20) His mentors. Steve Blank, Ken Duda, Maliz Beams, Dario Amodei, Brian Chesky, Matthew Prince, Sid Sijbrandij, Dustin Moskovitz, James Reinhart, Todd Park. 

(1:14:00) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives her life by "Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists" (from A Course in Miracles)

(1:15:25) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves

(1:16:08) The living person he most admires

Eric Ries is the Creator of the Lean Startup method and author of The Lean Startup, he has spent two decades reshaping how companies are built and managed. He is also the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) and host of The Eric Ries Show podcast. More info on his latest book Incorruptible here.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

(0:00) Intro

(1:31) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:18) Start of interview

(3:10) Ben's origin story

(7:14) Embracing Nevada as Home. Joining University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) in 2017.

(10:14) Joining Wilson Sonsini as Senior of Counsel (2026)

(13:00) The Reincorporation Movement. Competition between Delaware, Texas, Nevada and others. *Reference to E201 with Leo Strine

(14:28) Tracking Company Reincorporation Movements (at Business Law Prof Blog)

(16:02) The Texas vs. Nevada Landscape

(17:50) Reasons Companies Move Jurisdictions *Reference to E194 with Richard Blake on SV150 companies

(23:15) Delaware advantages

(25:32) How Nevada is competing: "[W]e need to be able to do is reduce the friction and the barriers to picking Nevada as a jurisdiction."

(26:09) Delaware's SB21 and Its Implications. *Reference to Cornerstone Research report on the increase of M&A settlements and paper Is Delaware Different? Stockholder Lawyering in the Court of Chancery by Jessica Erickson, Adam Pritchard, and Stephen Choi

(31:54) The Race to the Bottom theory *Reference to E200 with Betsy Atkins

(34:50) Nevada's Business Courts and Future Changes (constitutional amendment)

(41:44) The IPO Landscape: Trends and Insights (Delaware fell from over 80% of IPO incorporations in 2022-2024 to just under 62% in 2025; Nevada reached ~17%, and Texas just under 4%). Bill Ackman picking Nevada for the IPO of Pershing Square.

(44:45) Addressing Nevada's Reputation (the example of LQR House reincorporating from Nevada to Delaware) *Reference to the Startup Litigation Digest

(49:06) Founder-Led Companies and Jurisdiction Choices. Example of Mark Pincus: Founders, Leave Delaware (While You Still Can)

(53:46) Nevada’s Commission to Study the Adjudication of Business Law Cases

(55:50) Books that have greatly influenced his life:

(57:16) His mentors. 

(58:16) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives her life by "To have a friend, you got to be a friend." 

(58:39) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves

(58:57) The living person he most admires

Benjamin Edwards is a Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Ben also recently joined Wilson Sonsini as Senior Of Counsel to provide guidance to Nevada-incorporated companies.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License