Board Talk: 18 Crucial Conversations That Count Inside and Outside the Boardroom

The crucial conversations every board should be having. Discover how as a board member, you can know what’s really going on, and what you can do about it.

Kathryn Bishop and Gillian Camm have each spent decades in boardrooms in private sector companies, public bodies, charities, and schools, working with boards as Chair, Senior Independent Director, non-executive, or executive member. Their focus on making boards more effective blends this real life practical experience with their research and teaching. Kathryn is an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, where she works with boards of global organisations. She is also the first Chair of the Welsh Revenue Authority, set up to raise revenue in Wales for the first time in 800 years. She has served on boards in England and Wales in the public and charity sectors, including at the UK Intellectual Property Office, the Border Agency and Welsh Government as well as in schools and at university level. Her first book, on women’s working lives, was published in 2021 and she received a CBE in the 2021 Birthday Honours list for services to diversity and public administration. Her website sets out her other publications and videos as well as her blog. (kathryn-bishop.com) Gillian runs her own executive coaching and consultancy business, drawing on her extensive experience on boards in the private and public sector, including roles as the senior independent director at Wessex Water, a member the General Medical Council (GMC) and as the first lay chair of the Fitness to Practise Committee. She has also served as Chair of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and as Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of the West of England. In these roles, she has been actively involved in working with investors, regulators, and consumer groups, and in reviewing and re-developing systems of governance. For example, she led a review of governance of the GMC following the Shipman Inquiry and of university governance in Wales culminating in the publication of the Camm Review in 2019. She has also written for the Journal of General Management and The Financial Times.