Podcasts

A PDA University podcast series of insightful and dynamic conversations between leading private company directors and an ESG thought leader and practitioner.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices are becoming essential strategic and operational priorities, with ESG outcomes increasingly core to company valuation calculations. Privately held and family-owned enterprises have good business reasons to establish an ESG platform to keep them competitive. But boards must find new ways of working if they are to meet rising expectations for successful performance on ESG indicators. Listen as private company directors explore new options and imperatives with a long-time expert in corporate integrity practices.

With Venita Fields and Art Stewart.

In this episode, Venita Fields MBA and Art Stewart MPM consider how ESG’s evolution is increasingly challenging private company board directors to redefine their roles and modernize their mission as a body. How will boards reorientate their relationships to each other and rebrand internal power structures? How will they take on broader portfolios that involve an expanding landscape of risks, liabilities, and material/non-material competitive concerns? Some of these new, uncharted questions will be painful, awkward, and a cause for self-reflection.

With Venita Fields and Art Stewart.

America’s current policy debates are characterized by a tug of war between public and private interests. Climate change, leadership ethics, diversity, and equal opportunity are but a few of the themes playing out at this growing convergence of business priorities and public concerns.

As the ESG movement advances globally and nationally, financial markets and investors are looking for business to pursue profitability agendas more deliberately aligned with stakeholder-centric standards. Companies are not only expected to operationalize corporate values and policies but to benchmark them against KPIs, measuring their impact upon stakeholder value creation.

Join us as Venita Fields MBA and Art Stewart MPM consider how boards can manage the delicate balance between a company’s appropriate role in change activism and the board’s own pragmatic fiduciary responsibilities.

With Venita Fields and Art Stewart.

ESG factors will increasingly affect the competitiveness of privately or family-held companies, given the broadening interdependencies of today’s public and private markets. Adopting ESG standards requires private companies to be more transparent and accountable for their policies and actions, including how their ESG initiatives directly impact top-and bottom-line performance.

Board directors may be unaccustomed to deep or direct conversation about the changing expectations for their business, the appropriate role for ESG practices in their enterprise, or their own board’s limitations and failures. So how will they adapt and flourish in this new world?

Join Venita Fields MBA and Art Stewart MPM for a discussion on identifying outdated assumptions and addressing new priorities.

With Deb Boyda and Art Stewart.

Navigating COVID and its aftermath continues to force private company board directors to grapple with dramatically changing business paradigms. Increasing pressure and scrutiny are being applied to both public and private enterprises to measure the real material impact of their responsibility initiatives on top and bottom-line performance. Whether these initiatives involve revenue, calculated and validated material risk reductions, operational and in-market innovations, resilience-building initiatives, or deepening customer engagement, directors need to acquire a greater working knowledge of ESG-related issues.

In this episode, Deb Boyda MSA and Art Stewart MPM outline what this rising tide of priority concerns looks like.

With Deb Boyda and Art Stewart.

ESG is upending private company traditions. Historically, the norms of private company board culture, director recruitment, relationship dynamics, and governance priorities and practices, were defined by the prerogatives and advantages that come from operating in a closely held context. As a result, private companies enjoy less regulation, narrower scrutiny from stakeholders, significant avoidance of bureaucracy, more natural agility, and management approaches born out of company owners’ values and worldview.

Now, advanced ESG metrics and analytical capabilities are requiring different investments in R&D, customer experience innovations, risk management, and human capital capacity, among other areas.

Join us as Deb Boyda MSA and Art Stewart MPM discuss how board structures, processes, and functions must be redesigned to align with the transformed business operations needed to sustain durable competitiveness and avoid exposure to damaging risks or liabilities.