Episode 2: Pursuing a Portfolio

we are so blessed to have Connie Collingsworth and Amy Humphrey is here with us today they will continue the conversation that we started with both Deanna Oppenheimer and Phyllis Campbell from the last session talking a bit about their boardroom Journeys but then really about how to both build and manage board portfolios thank you Claudia um and it's a pleasure to uh be invited to participate in this um anytime I have anyone from the incredible team of board ready to reach out to me to get engaged in some way I jump on it so thank you for including me um such a great organization with such a meaningful cause and purpose so and you're doing great things so thank you it's a pleasure to be here um in terms of what I'm up to now um I'm doing as you know a lot of corporate board service um some advisory work mostly with companies that I have worked with before in some Capac and an operating role um continued learning of course I mean we're always trying to keep ourselves relevant professionally and stay curious I mean that's just something at least when you think of um board directors that's just a ticket to play to have as an innate um personality tradeit I guess um Community involvement doing a lot of um trying to give back um a lot of you know different speaking engagements or instructing um like at Foster um business school um and then also van life excuse me van life um my husband and I have a van that we really enjoy um traveling in and um my daughter is finally back here living which is wonderful I'm going to meet her for lunch today after we finish this so that's a it's a pretty full life yeah yes I love it well thanks for caring out the time to be here Connie how about yourself well I'm also happy to be here and enjoy getting to spend time with Amy who we got to know each other through board work and it gets to be a small community that way but it is really important to have board ready as part of that Community making these connections and helping people in their Journey so it's a real pleasure to participate today my story is not totally dissimilar from Amy's but I have uh more recently retired from my former job as the COO of the bill Melinda Gates Foundation where I also was a senior adviser till just the end of last year oh congrats so it's only been four months or so now that I've been untethered so to speak but my board Journey started uh way back in 2015 and we'll talk more about that and I really am enjoying the new flexibility and getting to spend more of my time both on boards and similar other type of things that keep me engaged learning about what's happening and those include teaching at the udub Foster School of Business a class on corporate boards and I um have other things that I'm doing that we'll talk about when we get into some of your other questions great well it's been great getting to know both of you I know we've focused on boards and all of that but learning that you guys are both giving back and teaching is so incredible so hopefully one day I'll pop in one of your classes um Connie let's start with you tell us a bit about your path to the boardroom so my very first board was actually a startup company that was formed by the law firm that I was a partner at which is KL Gates and it was an eisc Discovery company because the firm was doing the antitrust litigation for Microsoft and one of the lawyers came up with this patented idea of how to look for the confidential emails between attorneys that needed to be excluded from the discovery requests and so it was pretty clever at that time and we formed a company and I was the Corp lawyer who formed this company most of the board members were Partners in The Firm until we needed outside venture capital and that happened and then I left uh to go to the Gates Foundation and became the independent board member representing all the partners who had an equity interest in this entity and we sold that company to another uh public company basically it was a very successful exit but I was on that board a total of eight years so saw the startup all the way through the ultimate sale so that was my very first board and that started many years ago but after that in 2019 I became quite intentional and it's a funny thing there was a former partner of mine at the law firm who sent me this tiny little notice that was in a bar Journal about an organization that was being formed in response to the fact that Twitter now X and urban out fenders went public without any women on the board and that

was in 20189 time frame and they said we couldn't find any qualified women and that was in part because they thought to be qualified you had to be a CEO and as everyone knows there weren't that many female CEOs and so then this group of women lawyers said who spends more time in a corporate boardroom advising on all the issues of governance and risk management compensation than lawyers as either outside counsil or as inside counsel and they formed this group called direct women and this lawyer sent this to me and said this would be a good thing for you to do and so I went to that event in New York you had to apply and direct women has held that Institute now for I think going well since 2009 I said 2019 but it should have been 2009 and um about 30% of the people that have gone through that program were are now on public company boards wow uh because what they did is really help you think about how to present yourself not as a lawyer but as a potential board member and so that was an intentional step I took and then shortly after that I got my first two larger boards one of which is the banner corporation which is a public company board that I've been on for 11 years and then pra Blue Cross which is a nonprofit but really is run like a business Corporation and was on that for 10 years until the term limits kicked in and then since then we'll talk about some of the other boards but those are the ways that I ended up following that Journey as you asked gotcha and it kind of is the perfect transition to you as I know you two had some crossover on the premier board so tell us a bit about your journey as well right so um Claudia mine you know initially candidly early on I was very unintentional um I was solely focused on my operating career and my operating roles and responsibilities I think probably similar to Connie um and it wasn't really up until 2019 or you know a handful of years ago that I became a little bit more intentional and proactive um about serving on boards as a director um I thought that I would frame my thoughts on this rather than going through my own path I have the benefit of hindsight and I thought that maybe for the listeners I could share some um takeaways from my own path with the benefit of hindsight for them to maybe think about or consider and I would say three or four of these points that I'd like to share um were prevalent in every board role um that I've had over you know and have today and those four points um and I'll elaborate a little bit on each of them is are shine uh groundwork Network and resource so the first one is shine when I look back um and I hope this resonates with the folks listening really make an effort to shine in your operating role get noticed put your hand in the air take on additional tasks um you can lead from any role you don't have to have a SE title you know um be anointed in some way you can lead and be noticed for your leadership and your you know strong competencies from any role so that's the first thing I'd say is shine in your operating role or your career whatever you know whatever your spirit of influences um groundwork lay the groundwork early on and again mine was unintentional but in hindsight when I look back what were some of the things I did that now looking at it I say oh gosh that was helpful in securing some you know and having some board opportunities uh be offered up and that is uh nonprofit boards um you know if there's something of interest to you serve on those they're you know oftentimes not paid but um it's a volunteer but go for those um trade boards or industry boards if you have the opportunity to serve on any of those it's a great foray into learning um governance you know within a board and um it's also something you can put on your board CB um if you are in a role in your company where you're offered an opportunity to pitch to the board um say you're not at the sea level where you're going to do that pretty regularly even if you're in you know a a different role than what would normally be in front of a board if you have the opportunity to pitch to a board take it and observe and just observe the Dynamics in that boardroom so that's

those are some examples of laying the groundwork network Connie brought up a great point I mean the reason that I was appointed to or at least introduced um with the opportunity for premiera was because of a network uh reach so when I say Network throughout your career um it could be you know uh with people within your organization it could be attorneys which was the case with uh we had a common attorney that we knew that connected us um it could be external Auditors um you know there's uh Bankers private Equity there there's a lot of different points of contact that you can use for your you know Network um that's something that um again going back to point number one shine you don't always have to be deliberate and super proactive with that network if you're knocking it out of the park on point one the rest will follow people are going to notice you and then resources and this is where board ready comes to play um you know early on Connie and I or I'll speak for myself but I think you would Echo this Connie we didn't have the type of res board ready you know the women corporate directors or the 50-50 women on boards you know Pathways at udub I'm just rattling off a few um that we're involved in here locally but um there are a lot of resources out there one of the boards I serve on now one of my favorite Premier is a favorite board of mine Boise Cascade is I Deanna reached out to me on that thank you Dean if you're listening um and it's a wonderful board um but I got that through my network with Dean but also I put my bio in the talent ball for board ready and so it work I mean exactly another reason to join the talent Vault a real thing so yeah so that's how I would you know rather than going through sort of my individual path those are some of my takeaways or at least things that I would offer up uh if I were mentoring someone to maybe consider and be thinking about no that's great and I would love to Circle back to the groundwork piece because as I know you wanted to talk a bit about you know when you are targeting a board portfolio um you have some stats to that I know you wanted to share how do you be intentional about laying the groundwork so I would build off of Amy's comments and agree with them and then emphasize the networking and I describe it similarly but I think of it as planting seeds and uh it depends on your patients but sometimes they take a long time to grow and that's the rest of the story of my first boards I think I'll continue on with the story of direct women what happened is as a result of participating in that organization then in also response to the fact that there weren't enough Diversified boards the New York Stock Exchange held an event called moving the needle and invited women and minorities to participate in a speed dating event in effect at the New York Stock Exchange and I went to that event thinking we'll see what happens and they produced a book that had bios of all the people who attended and mailed those to the chairs of the governance committee wow of every public company and it fell in the hands of the chair of banner Corporation my gosh at that time was about a three and a half billion dollar bank and I had an all mail board and he flipped through there and he happened to have been a client of one of my startup companies that I helped raise four rounds of financing and then sold them it was a Selzer company that got sold to lroy and he wasn't my day-to-day client but he was a board member of that company as an investor and had seen me in the boardroom flipped through that book saw my picture and called me up and said looks like you're interested in board opportunities I had not spoken to him in 18 years wow and then since that time then the board uh was looking for someone with m& a experience and had done five Acquisitions has grown now to an$ 18 billion bank and has been a really wonderful Journey for me because it gave me a lot of learning about Banking and Regulatory and being a public company board member so that was an example of you know there was no way I knew that it's the shine that I was doing that work back that many years ago at the beginning of my career would result in that opportunity but you do have to tell people you want to be on boards because they otherwise don't look at you and know that I think and that's the intentionality part and I think that's what happened with Amy's story she told the colleague that I had I'm interested in boards he reached out to me and said

I've got someone you should meet because he'd worked with her on some of the companies where you were an officer which then goes to that's yeah and so you need an executive sponsor is what I would tell you and so you find these opportunities that have come back around by telling people what you're interested in and that's been the case with every almost board that I've gotten none of them have come through search firms they have all come because somebody had seen my work and was my advocate in the boardroom and said this person's got the skills we need and so the one thing I was going to talk about from a statistic standpoint there was and it used to be true and still I think is today the overemphasis on the Holy Grail of being on a public company board and if you look at the statistics you'll see that actually the peak of that was somewhere around 1996 and there's half as many today as there were back then and what you also don't perhaps stop to think about is the companies known as The Magnificent 7 were all formed within the last say 25 30 years as venture-backed companies and there's about six 60,000 corporate entities with boards but there's only 10,000 total public company boards and the 10e on average is 8 n years and the turnover is not that great which is a whole another podcast if you oh yeah we have that in the pipeline don't worry an interesting one but that's where we wanted to talk about portfolios because if you talk to both of us you'll find we each have one public board right but we have a whole array of other type of board activities that are very interesting and there's huge differences between not your role as a fiduciary but what the work of being a board member is like depending on whether you're a private company a family company a VCB company a private equ Equity company a co-op a nonprofit that's right Civic organization a board is a body of words but it changes dramatically and that's why we wanted to have people think more broadly about a portfolio of activities including even being the Strategic advisor or an Advisory Board member which is a whole new trend that's gained a lot of traction and can be just as interesting with not as big a lift and certainly less liability and I would tuck that that's a good point Connie I would tuck advisory member or Observer on a board under ground workor you know that's another role that you can expose yourself to or you know volunteer for essentially um if offered or take on if offered um that gives you exposure to different company compes as well as them exposure to you so it's not uncommon for them to use that as a pipeline right they may not have a seat ready but they want you available and they want you to learn about the company and for each other to get to know each other so that's another way to find whether you've got a good board fit and planting that seed right comes in various forms so and I know you know when we were talking you have that Matrix so you're thinking about planting the seed talk to us a bit about how you think about your skill sets what you can bring so I I'd tag a little bit on what Connie was saying first of all I you know Connie as well as Phyllis and Deanna are going to be super sharp on statistics and I told you before this call you know I go on my int Intuition or experience um I would say you know uh in terms of developing sort of your toolkit um and also managing or targeting a portfolio um one is to tag what Connie was saying um really make an effort to learn and understand different corporate structures um and the governance thereof I won't R rattle off the various types um that Connie just said um she did a good job kind of running the gamut there but it depending on the corporate structure it's the first uh pass to how that governance might be on that board and what's required excuse me you're always going to have the same or you know High fiduciary responsibilities as a director but that's one thing to really understand and that will be a lead in once you understand sort of what's required for different corporate structures legal structures um that will inform also what level of interest you might have in different I mean it'll be one component just one component um but also I would say um expand and again this is going to go

back to sort of laying the groundwork but expand focus on expanding your knowledge and experience breadth um for what you're doing and I'll sort of describe what I'm talking about there and the second point would be hone your craft in a couple of areas so expand your knowledge and experience I would say that's more the breadth of what you might be able to bring what you offer to a potential board you know um and then honing your craft would be more of the depth right and what I think what the way it used to be is you were kind of siloed in I know con is smiling probably because she's an sorry but you know she's an attorney you can see it on her and she's a dang good attorney but she's much the Connie I know and the Connie I've seen in a boardroom yeah I mean we tapped her legal expertise for sure without a doubt but she brought so much more um in the Strategic arena in the technical arena in the HR the you know I mean she just went the gamut um she's not you know I mean not just the legal expertise so I would say hone your craft in a few different areas there that at least position you or differentiate you um you know when a board when a namg committee is looking at uh what the competencies are that are the gaps that they need to fill on that board of directors right so that at least kind of opens a door there and then the experience and knowledge base I would say and again I'm going from hindsight with my own path these are some takeaways that were beneficial not because I intentionally did them but because they just I just kind of stumbled through it and that is um I was fortunate enough to get some experience in some different companies different Industries but they were adjacent to each other or sometimes I use the word Centric or Centric circles so um I'll give you an example so um take the companies of my operating roles of um uh you know a seafood comp a couple of seafood companies a uh Dairy company and then also um sitting on the board of a wood Manufacturing Company all of those are bag based um so they're going to have and the same business model and that you know there's a manufacturing component of a natural resource vertically integrated global distribution you know and a manufacturing point so you see where I'm going the business model is very similar but they're different Industries and um but you can parlay and you can transfer those skills to different you know different places so that I have found has been attractive and benef official when I've been looking at different board opportunities or when I get inbounds it's because oh well you've done this here or that there this here and you know you have that bread so I would add to that I would call it what is your superpower that's how it's been described to me and you have to both be ready to answer that question because having served as the chair of a public company board yeah there is a bit of a matrix that's used and you have to fill that out in the disclosure statement for the proxy who do you have that's expert on Cyber and it who's got strategy who's got uh regulatory who's got legal who's got accounting and finance and similar I mean honestly like I don't want to claim I'm only a lawyer the fact that Amy was a CPA checked a box we needed someone for the audit committee for pra now she's been a CEO several times and doesn't want to be pegged into that little hole just like I don't want to be called the lawyer but that was one of the hooks that worked for that time and I think you really need a broader Focus I think the pendulum maybe went too far sometimes with boards because you only have so many seats and I think that's the new challenge they're coming back towards the generalist someone that can really be more strategic and a general operator but you have more well-rounded boards who can think about all of the issues with some that have an emphasis whether it being on International or technology but I totally agree with Amy's comment about you do still get pigeon hold both with respect to that expertise whatever it is as well as sector and a hint for your audience is I find that one of the first questions people say what sector you want which frustrates me because um working at the foundation I they have 44 strategies between education Global Health agriculture water and sanitation women's issues it's huge and I had to

know all of those basically and so it's hard to pick one and then you say well I've been on a bank board and I've been on an insurance company board so mine aren't quite as tight in their themes they may say well it's they're regulated uh or whatever it is but I think that the newest Trend I'm seeing is people probably over index a bit on the fact that I came from this major International philanthropy and the type of opportunities I'm getting and to describe more of the portfolio I'm a strategic advisor to a public biotech company yeah that has a gene therapy technology for blindness as well as a vaccine that's an inhalation based technology and so I'm really enjoying that another thing I'm doing is I'm on the board of a European private Equity Fund that's called Planet first partners and they only invest in new technologies that meet the UN sustainable development goals or the EU green deal which I know a lot about but the companies they're investing are Hydro you know hydrogen Green Technology or submersion technology for data servers or a weave technology with laser equipment and the range is amazing but they have that one theme that they feel like I can add value because I understand the UN sustainable development goals from having worked at the foundation plus the International experience and so it it's interesting how all your life's experiences can come back around and be of value depending on the potential opportunities that are out there but it is true that you do have to have kind of a thumbnail elevator speech absolutely when you get that moment and you do have to write a different board bio which is a lot of what these courses talk about you're not writing about what you would write if you were employee looking for a job as a full-time employee you're trying to show that breadth and that executive knowledge that you know how to ask good questions and as they say you know you put your nose in but your fingers out you have to distinguish the role of a board member which is to bring an outside perspective to see things from a different angle and to help add value without trying to micromanage or second gas managements but support them and make sure they're seeing all sides of an equation and that's where having this broader background really can make you valuable as a board member so I love what Connie just said all of it um I'd love to tag on that and distill what you just said in a tool that I've used and um I'll call it a competency Matrix or an experience Matrix and so if you take what Connie just said of this breadth and depth of experience and knowledge base um one thing that um if I were mentoring some you know someone um that I recommend or at least suggest for thought is to and it's a one-page thing is to say it's just an exercise where on the x-axis they'll put on one sheet of paper on the x-axis it's going to list um different and I would take their highlights of their career um their operating roles and just you can name a company you know across the x-axis and also director roles if they have any um and then on the y axis which is the most important are your disciplines or your areas of expertise so um for example I I'll say so mine might say the five categories might say um leadership operational strategic um uh you know uh technical regulatory or you know reporting you know something like that right and then you have sub bullet points but what it does is this Matrix and then you check the box where did you have an operating role where you executed these respon or LED these different competencies where did you do it in a board seat right because it's different I mean if I led a transaction m& a transaction in my operating role it's a lot different than if I participated on a task force as a director right so it's important to know yeah exactly so um so that's one thing that you can put in a talent Vault frankly and it allows the board ready team to see on one page oh okay I got a good snapshot of you know this person's of where this person can where how and what this person can contribute well that's such an important distinction for us too because we see when we place candidates yeah those keyword searches are so important so if you can be really specific to your point if you have a matrix and be really

specific about what you offer that's when you see those names you know rising to the top with AI anyway it's changed a lot of that and whatever the source is you need to be able to say what's your value add what you know is it scaling is it International is it you know what is the thing that you want when the search goes then for your name to pop up next to exactly so I think that's a that's something that's become even more important the way Ai and computers are doing the searches these days and more to come on the board ready side for that as well so maybe we'll invite you both back for another one how about that um well as we kind of wrap up here I would love to also talk you know we've been talking about planting the seed and your Matrix obviously you both did a really great job of that and you had a portfolio career so talk to us a bit about how to manage a portfolio once you have it uh Cony you want to start us off sure I think that that's another distinction public companies have to do their quarter reports so their board meetings are pretty fixed from a timing perspective based on their reporting obligations whereas the other type of companies you'll find they have a lot of flexibility on when the board meets and so you don't always you have you can have more of these obligations if you've got a portfolio than if you're on four public company boards and you're trying to figure out for well there are people who are and it gets to be a nightmare but you also have to understand the difference between the time commitments so for example P A Bank board is one of the heaviest lifts from a regulatory meeting perspective they meet eight to 10 times a year versus the standard once a quarter uh public company boards have a lot more expectation with respect to the committee load and how much the Committees meet where if you're in a startup or private Equity company they may not even have committees yet they may be starting with their audit committee but they certainly don't have all the levels of committees that a lot of public companies have so the time commitment varies quite a bit as well as the frequency of the meetings and the latitude of flexibility and so that's the other benefit of having a portfolio is that you can manage that because otherwise um I would find in retirement if all I did was meet with one public company board eight times I would have at this stage of my life a little bit too much free time right um I also have two daughters and and really enjoy the flexibility I now have but I love continuing to learn and that's the other thing I would emphasize about staying engaged it's really important not to do the traditional I'll show up and then that's all I do I think they're expecting today's board member to know what's happening with respect to the economy with respect to supply chain with respect to AI with respect to the industry in which you're serving on um there's lots of Trends happening all the time that's why I'm really enjoying teaching the class on corporate boards because I'm having to get deep and staying on top of all of that which I think then just is part of my portfolio of being a good board member absolutely thank you I would recommend to your listeners if you haven't already on this point of how do you maybe perform what Connie was just getting at once you do have a portfolio um I would highly recommend going back and listening to Phyllis and Deanna speak um because they talked about uh some words of wisdom yes um you know engage show up um as Connie was saying today's board director um it's not about just reading the company materials I mean you need to understand all the areas Connie was saying competitive landscape I mean you have to if you're going to shine as a director you need to go the extra mile and you owe it in my opinion yes in your opinion yes you owe it to the company to the organization I think there has been and there's a lot of data on this the new board evaluations being done with board members who are evaluating each other saying you know the board members they think need to move on are the ones who basically are just showing up having read the meetings and the rest of time they are traveling or golfing or whatever it might be and that's not what you really need to do as a board member you need to bring a different perspective you need to and so there's a balance of having the time but also knowing that you're really staying connected with the issues that are really being faced by the company yeah absolutely that and to your back to your point with Di and Phyllis I mean they do such a great job of it a quick plug for them we have obviously we have check-ins and meetings and I always know to carv out at least 15 minutes at the beginning for them to chat just about that you know what's the latest and what they're seeing in the boards and all that it's

great learning for me um but you know they continue that conversation and it sounds like you both do the same so um really great to hear my last question I know we're kind of running out of time what about pieces of advice in relations to caution Flags I know we kind of chatted a bit about that so you're in the boardroom you have a portfolio what are some red flags that you all have seen that maybe you could share you know with the audience uh maybe I'll share some things for to getting in the boardroom just because I'd have to redact a million but um I would say uh in your diligence uh one is the easy one is what Connie was alluding to is you know understand the time commitment because if you do step on particularly on a corporate board um where you're getting compensated show up right and give it 110 and so understand what that time commitment is um part of your diligence also should be to um try and understand the culture and I don't mean just the culture of the company but board and also um maybe how the board interacts with management particularly CEO um I think Phyllis said it really well in the last webinar that you did and Phyllis said you know on culture you're going to be lending your reputation or investing your reputation into that company understand what you're investing your reputation in I loved it I loved that bit of wisdom from Phyllis I think it uh it resonates with me um what else I could go on with the I think the difference that's important to emphasize is it's not only the time commitment for one year but when you sign up you're expected to be there minimum usually of three if not longer um it would look pretty awkward for you actually if you say oh I changed my mind I I'm too busy or I don't like this group after all um that would be quite a stain on your record really to serve and so the you know there's reasons why boards turn over if you're being sold or different things happen but as I said the average 10 years8 to nine years on a public company board and that's been my personal experience as well and so know that you're signing up for a longer commitment even if you're elected every year yeah but as far and that's another reason to do as Amy said um a lot of do diligence about who you're going to be working with look into who the other board members are because you're spending a lot of time with that Community absolutely and it has its own culture separate and so to me one of the joys of being on the board frankly is getting to know my fellow board members learning from them one last pitch I would say to people that are still working I found serving on boards as one of the best professional development opportunities I could ever have better than any conference that ever occurred because you're listening to other smart people who have been in leadership positions ask good questions watching the management team from the different angle than being on it yourself and so I think of it is really a wonderful thing for people to do during their career not just afterward and I would highly and supported that among my direct reports if it's starting with nonprofit boards that's a great way to start but it was something I encouraged U my own team members to do because I saw the value of being in that room and watching decisions get made whether it be through a crisis whether it be succession planning whether it be strategy development it really is an amazing seat to sit in from that perspective and I think that's a great call out too of like you guys are talking about staying engaged in learning but you also can learn by you know being at the table and being surrounded by I mean I'm taking all these notes here just learning from YouTu so I can only imagine we're always exemplified no that's a ticket to play for a board director like I said you have to have that innate curiosity and desire to learn period full stop yep you have to and that's not something you train yeah that's a great Point well one question I just um that just came through the chat how do you determine the optimal size and composition of your board portfolio well it depends on what you want to do with your time and so it there is no optimal it depends on your own personal situation how much you want to uh work in your day job if you're trying to do both and I always made it a priority I never missed an executive meeting or any commitment at my day job even though I was serving on boards and made it real clear but it worked out that I never really had conflict so I was really careful about my choices

based on those I was a board member of the nacd for a Time locally and then its meetings started to conflict with the banner board meetings which got moved and so I stepped off the nicd board because of that change so but ideally you plan that out and so you see whether it's feasible before you make a commitment the first place and then you just have to not overom it and make sure you still have balance in your life as well because these are long-term as I said obligations once you say yes yeah I agree with that and it's a personal thing it's the time that you want to commit are you still in an operating role day job um do you have children do you have you know or other or elderly parents that you're taking care you know what whatever the case is so it is and but the other thing that Connie was getting at is every board we kind of dialing back to of our comments early on um different boards require a different lift um and based on your experience it may require different lifts so for example I served on a board of a company that I used to have an operating role in that lift was pretty quick for me the materials and the in I just I was tapped in it did you know what I mean it didn't take much time for me to just be always up to speed because I used to work there anyway you get the idea whereas prera it's a lift you know it's Healthcare it's a different it's a complex industry I love it but I invest a lot more time preparing for those so back to Connie's point I had to learn a lot of acronyms for the banking world that I didn't know but I also actually candidly waited I started getting out there in anticipation of becoming an empty nester there you go and so I had the one board I described when my daughters were young but then I said no I want to do this but I'm going to wait till they both graduated which was about 14 years ago and that's when I really started doing it more seriously more inally because I knew I wanted to reserve those last year's time not be away from their events and so um it you're as you learn over your career there's Peaks and valleys and the other point to emphasize that's true with boards too um when you're going if you're selling a company if there's tough issu issues don't count on four meetings and that's it I mean when Silicon Valley Bank went into crisis a year ago last March we had a meeting on Sunday you know what's the contagion risk Where Do We Stand how do we are we at any risk relative to the whole banking industry when the stock price dropped 50% across the whole sector we were good but we had to ask a lot of questions and have extra meetings to make sure we were thinking that through so if you go in thinking oh it's just four times that would be a naive expectation as well absolutely well speaking talk about startups I know we unfortunately we are we do have to wrap up um but both of you thank you so much listening to your stories I think for me was just incredible my page is filled with notes thank you both I'd love to kind of wrap up with you know you talked about planting the seed kind of seeing it grow and managing it when it does start blossoming and then with you Amy the shine groundw work Network and resource I think those are such great tangibles for the folks on the call to walk away with so thank you again and thank you all for joining here we will have another one coming up here shortly um and thank you all for your time