First, a little bit of introduction. I am Sunali Samuels. I am a Silicon Valley, California based CTO VP turned board member and startup adviser.I started my career as a technologist as a software engineer with a master's degree. And found my way into the executive ranks. And as of couple years back, I've transitioned into what I call a portfolio life. Where I've taken my expertise as a technologist and as a product person, applying it on the other side of the table, sitting on multiple boards. I am a board of director of a public fintech here in the US called Avid Xchange. Which is 2,200,000,000 in market cap. And I've been a board of, private series d companies. I'm an adviser to multiple venture funds. As well as a startup growth adviser.

But at my heart, I am a technologist, and I say engineering runs in my blood and in my DNA. And so, so that's a little bit about me. One thing I do wanna say is what I found transitioning into the board roles was that It was a very lonely world out there. A very few of us, very few women are actually, in the boardrooms today. It's better today than it was a couple years back with increase awareness. But I would definitely like to see more able business leaders, technology leaders, women leaders to be in the boardroom. And so one of my hidden agendas for the session today is to bring the perspectives of the boardroom. So that more of you can join me, in in being in the boardroom.

So for today's session, I am first gonna answer the WIFM question, which is what's in it for me. And so I'm hoping to demystify what Shirley does the board do? I have a poll created. Please take the poll so that I know in a harmony of you are aware of what a board member does. And so I'm hoping to demystify what does a board member really do. Right? And then also for, to inspire you to consider board practice, as well as sort of bringing it home really with the topic of this session, which is around AI in particular, and what are boards looking for? And how should you present to your board, to your executive management, you know, if you get the opportunity to do so, and so that's really the goal of my session today.

And so let's start with the primer on what higher the what does the board do. The primary, responsibility of a public company board member is really shareholder value maximization. So if you own a stock of a public company, you know, it is really the responsibility of the board members to ensure that they, along with the management team, the executives, the CEO, CTO, CFO is what we call NEOs, the named executive officers are doing their very best to to get the shareholders value maximize while balancing risk, and ensuring governance, especially in the US with all the SEC rules.

So That's in a nutshell what a board member's job is. And so looking down a little deeper, one of the biggest things is really to grow the revenue. So working aside the management team, to put together a solid robust strategy in place to ensure that the company's revenues grows. Right? We all want that because when the revenue grows, the stock price grows. And, we, as stockholders, definitely wanna our equity, and the stock price grow. So that's one of the primary responsibilities of the board members. Now, the other shift that actually happened March wanna say in the last couple of years post COVID is, there is an excessive focus on profitability those of you who are in public companies, you might have seen the shift. Right?

The dialogue, you know, before that used to be grow at all costs, And we've seen the side effects of that where companies that I shall not name grew at all costs. Hired at all costs. And guess what? A couple of years later, they are firing at all costs. And so, why while that is definitely not advisable, you know, industry wide, what you can see is there's a huge focus on profitability I'm sure this is not no news to most of you where, you know, our teams and companies are expected to do more with less. And so the board definitely keeps, their eyes on what we call profitability, which shows up in terms of business as EBITDA. It shows up in terms of Rule of 40. If you're in a startup, and so that's another big job of a board member. The last but not the very least, probably the most important one is managing risk for the company.

So ensuring governance, managing risk, ensuring there's no things like malpractice, ensuring all the SEC guidelines are met here, in the US or to the local norms of your country. That is the other big responsibility of a board member. And so, let's say, you know, you do get an opportunity to present to your company's board, or you are eating your, you know, CTOs or CPOs or, you know, so in creating those board presentations. So as women or as leaders, what do we wanna do and ensure that we do in those presentations. Right? So the first thing is it ties back to sort of, you know, what is a board looking for? Right? The first thing is How can AI help grow the revenue? Right? And so, you know, we've heard a lot about AI and opportunities.

I'm sure depending on your domain, depending on your product, depending on your business, all of you as technology leaders, as well as business leaders. Have had the opportunity to think about how can AI truly help, you know, grow your revenue. Right? It could be an entirely new business stream that you could launch, you know, really leveraging the power of data that hopefully your company has collected over time. And then building your machine learning models or whatnot to just really truly bring an entire new product line to the customers. So that's sort of you know, one way you could do it. The second thing is in your existing product lines, you could be actually providing more features. To to make your product more valuable to your customers. Right?

And I'm sure, you know, all of you in the last couple of years, you know, you you've you you've gone through your road map discussions and road map discovery and, you know, found those AI things, that that you can do, and then brought that up. Right? Now when you present into the board, the board is definitely looking for statistics and numbers because the board will look for not just the opportunity side. But also the risk side. The board's gonna put the risk cat on and say, yeah, this is a great new product of what what what potential legal risk data to security risks. Is this gonna incur for the company and then sort of have a good discussion with you, not just on the statistical fact, the numerical impact of growth in revenue, 10%, 20% year over year or whatnot, but also sort of weighing the risk. Right? So the risk versus benefit trade off is a question that you should expect from your boards if you happen to present to the boards. Right?

The next thing is profitability. Right? Now, GitHub started with, the software developer co pilots and now co pilots are a thing of the own. Right? So whether you're in marketing, whether you're in sales, whether, you know, you're in finance, there's all kinds of co pilots out there. Which essentially are promising sort of more productivity gains, and essentially moving towards do more with less. Right? So In a one way of bringing profitability, sort of bringing in this suite of AI tools that you could make to make a marketing function more effective, perhaps by, you know, you know, by by helping with creating brand campaigns, content creation, sales with things like, you know, SDRs, things like finding qualified leads, whatnot, as well as obviously technology software development.

Your name, if there's a co pilot for, you know, each one of our functions. Right? So the board is gonna look for How are you leveraging AI to sort of, you know, improve profitability and, you know, how much profitability can we expect? Right? So 20%, 40%, 60%. And that's sort of becoming foundational. Right? I think the 3rd big aspect is really, and I truly believe in this, is that any company's success ful when your customers are successful. So how are you making your customers successful? Right? You know, are you making, use of AI to make your customers grow faster, better, or providing services cheaper. Right? So all of those considerations to really make your customers effective. And then your customers are more active. You're more loyal customers, attrition, is low. Acquisition is better.

It's all a good, happy ending. And then, you know, your company is definitely gonna grow from there. So that's an obvious one. I think the other thing that board look for, especially in a technologist me is are you really making, you know, core technology investments and building the foundation? You know, we all realize that, you know, AI is here to stay and so really taking the time to build that foundation of innovation. In investing in data science, you know, investing in course stacks that enable you to experiment and, you know, all the all the way of the software life cycle from, you know, iteration to model testing to post, you know, post deployment model iteration and as well as measuring model drips.

Are you truly creating that fundamentally tech stack that's gonna run with you and help you enable the unlock for the next 1 to 5, 10 years. Right? So that's another thing a board will look for. Right? The other thing I wanted to say, and I could ask this a lot, which is, you know, sort of this high versus hope cycle. And as as as technology leaders, I'm sure you've heard of the Gartner, you know, Gartner cycle of any new technology, in a evolution where essentially you see a new technology comes into play and, you know, this this graph where, you know, any new technology introduced, there's a lot of a promise of the technology and as as you go over time promise, you know, sort of increases increases, then eventually there's, you know, people realize that this technology is really not as big a deal as we thought it was in this sort of what you call a bottom, which we call the throw of this illusion man.

And after that, you know, the technology then, you know, people do start to sort of realize the value of the technology where it fits and not. And then after that, you know, sort of, you know, the the value of the technology keeps going up. And then you sort of come into the plateau of productivity. And so If you have not, please check this, Gartner Cycle of, of technology evolutions, whether it's cloud, whether it's an internet, you know, about 20, 25 years back, or it is AI. Every new technology goes through sort of this, this this Gartner evolution, if you may. Right? And so from the boardroom, our perspective is today, you know, we are certainly in what we call the peak of, inflated expectations. And so what that means is we do believe there's a tremendous unlock with AI, but we also believe right now the hype is bigger, is bigger than than the potential promise.

And so what I see in the boardroom is that companies and boards certainly want to invest in AI, but are actually making cautious, measured steps. In investing in AI. And so as I said earlier, that that comes in the in in the form of sort of looking at our risk versus reward that comes in the in the form of looking at how many millions are we spending on this? Right? What does the potential unlock? Right? Are we going, you know, where are we in terms of sort of our investment appetite, right, Are we being, if, are we investing in innovation by the same time making measured investments and innovate? So that's a big focus for a lot of different boards. Right? So, you know, that that's a good conversation to have with your board if you have not already. And so when it comes to governance, right, this is perhaps the biggest, you know, biggest area that the board focuses on. There's a whole lot of things going on.

Right? If you've if you've if you've been in the security land, you probably heard of the nest framework NIST. If you have not, please check it out. And similarly in AI, there is a AI risk management framework a forum nest. We call it the AI RMF and IST framework. And so that has a lot of different guidelines that are, you know, out there, you know, the about, you know, how to manage AI risks, and and govern, essentially. Right? And so it shows up in a lot of different ways. I mean, data security, data privacy, all of that good stuff, but also AI ethics, right, you know, is every team member that is, you know, leveraging AI today or in fact, those that are, you know, definitely creating AI, whether it's model deployment, you know, analytics or whatnot, have they gone through AI ethics training?

Is there a role based AI a training because, you know, different roles of different responsibilities and different access to PII data. And so is there a role based training in place? What are the policies if an unexpected issue happens? Right? If an unexpected issue happens, you know, how can a person finding in an expected issue, whether it's, in a data leak that was detected or whether it was a potential, you know, harm that was detected. What are the escalation doubts in place. Right? So having clear documented policies about, you know, how this this information can surface Ah, and the folks that our decision makers can see that. Right? So that's a big part of it. And then in terms of How are we assessing risks on an ongoing ongoing basis? Right?

Do we have an external auditor in place? Right? Is it only internal audits or external as well? And then 1st and foremost, there's actually also transparency and a culture of transparency where every single member of the company feels empowered to share, you know, AI issues, as as as they come up. Right? And we've all heard of AI litigations. I was I was just checking on AI litigations yesterday and there's just a growing number of AI litigations happening on companies. So, it's a real risk now. We've heard about OpenAI and New York time suing OpenAI, you know, for for breach of, of the data that was leveraged by OpenAI. There's a similar lawsuit pending on Alphabet. And these are big names, but there are actually also a lot of smaller companies that are actually facing AI lawsuits already. So it's a real risk folks.

And so, you know, if you if you do not have it, please ensure that you have AI risk frameworks, policies, all of those good stuff in place because as business leaders and technology leaders, you certainly wanna wise and be that be that voice that brings reason, into leveraging AI.

Right? And so, let's say you have all of these, you know, things in place and now you wanna present your board, and how do you go about it? Right? You know, the biggest advice that I give, to anybody wanting to present to the member is to the board is just three things, which is Chris, clear, concise. So fewer slides, extremely crisp messaging, in a very clear messaging, single word on that slide, that goes matters because board members read it, board members questions it. Keep away from TMI too much information. You just wanna give enough information in this slide and then really voice over and speak to everything, that you can. And then focus on impact impact impact, numbers matters, stats matter, board members love to see that. As well as focus on, on risks and how you plan to mitigate all the potential risks that come up on this. Right?

And so, so, so this is in a nutshell in everything, that I really wanted to cover today. Hopefully, this gives you an idea about the multiple different things, gives you an idea about what members, what what members may expect. Out of you walking into their boardrooms, making a presentation to those board members, impressing those. But more importantly, all of you are some women out there I hope this gave you an idea about, you know, different board members and what they do and, you know, how you, how you may potentially consider a board member role in your in your future careers. And I hope to see you, one of you or many of you in the boardrooms of the future. With that, I have a couple minutes left, 2 minutes left for Q and A. So if you have any questions, Please type type them up in the chat.

You know, I'd love to take, you know, any important questions that are surfacing up in the chat. And if not, I hope all of you have a great time. Enjoy the conference and the content that we have here today. I see one question coming up, which is how do you apply for board member, position. There's a whole lot of preparation that needs to go before you apply for board member position. It involves creating your board bio. It involves, perhaps, joining organizations that can help place women on boards And so, that will be sort of my 10 second answer about how to go about it. There's another question about how have you handled stream viewpoints from board members. A very good question, Kim. What you'll find is different board members come with different strengths. And so they also come with different opinions. And so you may find, you know, extreme viewpoint.

So it actually depends about it depends upon how your board, you know, what the board culture is. I've I've been in boardrooms where the culture is sort of more, I wanna say, amicable and temperate where the board is what I call nose in arms out, which means they share their advice but they really leave it up to the named executive officers to run the company. And those are sort of the bose, best best boards to be on. As well as best NEOs, like, CXOs to be on. And so if you have that type of board, that's awesome. The board gave you advice. You've taken all of the and then do what's best also circling back to the board members. For those of you that asked you for a follow-up, that's one. But then you actually, you know, if you do land in a position like, you have where there's 16 viewpoints.

You always have an option of sort of taking a follow on meeting with the board member you know, to understand and get deeper and explain your point of view, your strategy, and then perhaps both take guidance and, you know, use that informed guidance to to form your own, view of how you wanna run, your own diligence.

So that's in a nutshell and answer. The next question from Brooklyn is how do you answer a question from a board member? If you do not know the best answer in that moment. Such a good and a real question. Right? So if you do not know, the answer from that, I think the best the best best way I've seen is for folks who say, I do not know the answer on top of my head. I will go back, do my research, and come back. And I feel like that real answer is far better than folks that are sort of shooting from their head. Right? And men do this a lot more than women do asked me, you, your women are there. But if if it's just sort of shooting from your hip and, you know, a short board member will catch you when you are doing something like that.

So I feel like if you actually are in a position where you get an answer, you just successfully acknowledge that question and say that you will circle back, and do make sure to sit back with the member. So thank you. Honesty is always number 1 when building relations. Very true, and that goes with board members as well. That's great. Thank you folks for the engaging conversation. We are at the end of our discussion time today. It was great to see all of you and, hope you address the value from this conversation. And again, hope to see more of you in the boardroom in the future.