In this episode of On Boards, hosts Joe Ayoub and Raza Shaikh speak with Dr. Linda McGoldrick, an international board director, strategy leader, and policy expert in healthcare and life sciences. 

With 30 years of global experience across the U.S., U.K., and European boards, Linda shares what defines high-performing boards, the importance of trust and diversity of thought, and how geopolitical and technological shifts are transforming governance today.

Key takeaways

1.Traits of high performing boards

• Regardless of size or geography, effective boards are well-prepared, prioritize meaningful discussion over reporting, and cultivate trust and mutual respect.
• High performing boards all display strong relationships, open communication, and diversity of thought among board members.
• Linda added that values, camaraderie and trust are intangible aspects that are important aspects of a successful board.

2. Boards in the U.S. vs the rest of the world

• Linda observed that even in non-English speaking countries, English serves as the universal language for board communications – a reflection of its role as the global language of business
• Boards outside the U.S. place greater emphasis on courtesy, respect, and a thoughtful pace of discussion, reflecting multicultural membership and diverse business contexts.
• Historically, many U.S. boards were more domestically focused, but Linda sees this shifting as companies expand internationally. Directors today are expected to understand global markets, geopolitical dynamics, and comparative business environments.

3. Expansion of risk oversight

• Today’s boards must monitor not only financial and operational risks but also a host of geopolitical, regulatory, and other related challenges.

4. Artificial intelligence impact on boards

• The use of AI has implications of security, benefits, risk and investment as the technology continues to expand and have impacts on economies and society.
• Boards have the responsibility to oversee the implications for organizational strategy and risk management.
• Linda views AI as a valuable efficiency tool, such as bots that summarize materials but stresses that human judgment, discretion, and ethics must remain central to board decision-making.

Quotes

• “I don’t want to see myself around the table. I want to see a diversity of experience. We all bring certain talents which feed into the most rigorous and robust discussions around board process.”
• “AI is a global race… I think the human element of discretion and insight is critical to know the line of technical and bot-expertly-fed conversations versus human thoughtful conversations in dialogue.

Guest Bio

Dr. Linda McGoldrick is an international board director and healthcare and life sciences leader with more than 30 years of global executive and governance experience. She serves on the boards of SmileyLife Holding, Alvotech, where she chairs the Audit Committee, and Compass Pathways, and is the Founder and CEO of Financial Health Associates International.

Linda has held senior roles across the U.S. and Europe, including leadership positions at Marsh’s Healthcare & Life Sciences practice, Kaiser Permanente’s European operations, and Veos plc. She has also served as CEO of the International Diabetes Federation and the Drug Information Association.

A dual U.S.–U.K. citizen, Linda brings deep expertise in global strategy, regulatory environments, and board governance across public, private, and nonprofit organizations.

Transcript: 

Joe: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to On Boards, a deep dive at what drives business success. I’m Joe Ayoub, and I’m here with my co-host, Raza Shaikh. Twice a month, On Boards is the place to learn about one of the most critically important aspects of any company or organization; its board of directors or advisors, with a focus on the important issues that are facing boards, company leadership, and stakeholders.

Raza: Joe and I speak with a wide range of guests and talk about what makes a board successful or unsuccessful, what it means to be an effective board member and how to make your board one of the most valuable assets of your organization.

Joe: Before we introduce our guest, we want to thank the law firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish, who are again sponsoring our onboard summit this year, taking place on October 20th in their beautiful conference center in the Boston Seaport. Nutter has been an incredible partner with us in every way. We [00:01:00] appreciate all they’ve done to support this podcast.

Our guest today is Dr. Linda McGoldrick. Linda is an international independent board member, global business strategy leader and policy expert in the healthcare and life science industries.

Raza: She has spent her entire 30-year career working at the C level in both senior executive and advisory role as a CEO consultant, independent board member of numerous US, UK, and European companies.

Joe: Linda has guided a full spectrum of companies, from startup to listed companies, in developing new growth strategies across existing geographic markets, providing deep expertise in navigating complex financial and healthcare regulatory environments in the US, and across Europe and Asia, including emerging markets. Welcome, Linda. Thanks so much for [00:02:00] joining us today on On Boards.

Lina: It’s my pleasure. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Joe: We touched upon your background in the introduction, but it would be great for you to just talk a little bit about your most recent board activity to give people an idea of what you’ve been doing in the last four or five years.

Lina: Yes, happy to. Although I’ve worked with boards including startup and family, midcap and Fortune 200 companies, it’s a very interesting spectrum of experience. I think best practices transcend geography and they transcend size. In the last sort of four to six years, I’ve been working with high growth companies, either chairing the board or chairing audit and risk or other committees.

So, it’s an interesting space, high growth companies. You’re working with entrepreneurs, working with dynamics that require [00:03:00] boards to be nimble and insightful and aware of aspects of the market.

Joe: So, talk about some of the difference in the boards you’ve served, you serve on or have served on, what materials they give you in advance, how do the meetings different? How much presentation versus discussion, the focus of the agenda, that kind of thing.

Lina: Yes, happy to. I think regardless of what country a board is based, I think the practice and processes are similar. Preparation materials come out at a minimum a week in advance. They’re often additional updates, so one just needs to be thorough and prepared. The assumption for any board is that you are prepared, so we’re not listening to repetitious reports. We’re delving into real discussion and exchange, [00:04:00] prioritizing issues at any period of time. And in doing so, I found a helpful process is having either a closed session, an executive session at the beginning of the meeting and/or at the end of the meeting because it allows everyone to kind of air views, questions amongst ourselves prior to inviting in senior management, et cetera. So, it’s just a useful tool that’s very much up to the style of leadership and the board chair.

Joe: I am curious. You’ve been on a number of boards and very different boards. What are the components of board culture that you believe are most important for a high performing board?

Lina: Well, I have a real bias here because over the years I’ve experienced, fortunately, many high performing boards, occasionally [00:05:00] only a few less than high performing, and I think that the single most important factor is very much setting the tone at the top, the relationships between board members, and kind of stepping back from that.

That really starts with the composition. You want diversity of thought, experience, however that comes together. I, for one, don’t want to see myself around the table. I want to see that diversity of experience. We all bring certain talents, so there is that, which feeds into, I think, the most rigorous and robust discussions around board process.

The other piece is sort of the intangible. It’s about personalities and values, a shared sort of camaraderie that is basically chemistry, so I think there’s both sides of that and if you get the [00:06:00] best of both, you usually have a very high performing board. And trust has to be the basis of those relationships.

Joe: Well, I’ll just comment. Raza and I have talked a lot about the importance of diversity. We refer to it as diversity of perspective. Couldn’t agree more with your comment. And it feels like boards are going in that direction more and more all the time, at least from what I’ve seen. But I agree, it is about trust and I think that’s the other comment that really struck me because if board members can feel comfortable with each other, with leadership, with management, I mean the whole boardroom, what goes on there is so much more likely to be extremely productive. Yeah. So, I thank you for that.

Raza: Yeah, I think the comment about high performing boards being similar to a high performing sports team also resonates with me. And I think the underlying basis for [00:07:00] those are very similar as well in terms of building trust, in building the right culture and understanding each other and knowing each other.

Linda, you also happen to have a very unique perspective that you have served on number of boards on both sides of the proverbial pond on this side here, in the US and in Europe and other markets as well. I’m very curious to ask if you have seen any cultural differences in various boards in particular as it relates to US versus the rest of the world. Any thoughts, comments that you can share on that?

Lina: Yes, I’ve had the privilege of serving on boards based in different countries, and I think the common denominator there is very much an appreciation of members of multicultural and multinational awareness, respect, courtesy. It’s a very thoughtful approach, [00:08:00] and I personally love that dimension. I find it interesting and of course the companies are, in terms of their employees, could be scattered in many countries or not. But if they’re just in the one country, they still need to have an awareness of what’s going on geopolitically, the competitive and comparative context for that industry in other areas. So, it’s a much more sort of aware, astute understanding of the environment in which we live.

I’ll just lob in the complex and topical word, geopolitical disruptions, and an awareness of that, and I think a mutual respect around the table. I think it’s more difficult to make sweeping generalizations when you’re talking about cultural context. I served on several boards outside of the US before I had [00:09:00] my first US corporate experience.

Though I’m American, I’m also British, but most of my career has been spent outside of the US and I’m always a bit taken back by historically of US companies were a bit more aware of US only and less sort of aware and had experience for other parts of the world. That is fortunately changing as companies are becoming more global, international, or appreciate that from a competitive standpoint and at a comparative standpoint, directors and senior leadership must be more astute about what’s happening in the world. So, that’s kind of my broad brush, but that has personally played out to be true. 

Joe: Is what you’re commenting on about US boards true of both private and public companies?

Lina: Yes. And I think [00:10:00] that, yes, overall, I think if we look at private companies or startup companies, they’re just less evolved by the nature of their business, right? 

Joe: Well, not all private companies are less evolved. I mean, there’s some incredibly complex private companies, but I’m just thinking that if you’re in the public eye and you’re publicly traded, that there might be a different level of awareness about what goes on outside the US, although we can be very insular in our thinking sometimes.

Lina: Well, I think it started that way, but to your point, I think of course there can be very sophisticated and complex private companies. That’s just almost, did you go public? Did you IPO or not? Or the reverse, public companies that decide they wish to go back and become private. You have a different stakeholder group, you have different shareholders, so you’re answering to different audiences, [00:11:00] and often private companies have more flexibility because they’re not answering to say Wall Street on a monthly, quarterly basis, which can be advantageous, depending on the strategy at any one point in time.

Raza: Linda, one fun fact that we talked earlier when we were speaking before this, that a lot of the boards across the world are still maybe using English as the language for the board’s communication and discussions. I thought that was fascinating. How did you see that happening in the boards that you had experienced?

Lina: Yes. English is the language of all of business today, and that’s always been the case from my experience. I recently went on a board based in Budapest and it’s a smaller company. I’ve worked at boards in Central and Eastern Europe as well, not just EU countries, and it’s always been English.[00:12:00] 

Joe: And that’s not changing from what you’ve observed at all.

Lina: No, no. I think it’s only become more so.

Raza: Did you see any other differences in like thinking linearity versus creative? And I know that could be very, very board specific, and your impressions of certain boards must be just based on that small data set. Again, not to make any sweeping generalization, but did you notice any patterns on how different boards deal with problem solving?

Lina: I think all I could say with any bit of experience is it’s so determined by the board chair and the culture of the company. It’s very culturally driven, about attitudes, about degree of risk taking of the CEO, but very much culturally driven by the board chair.

Joe: That kind of leads into a question I wanted to ask, [00:13:00] which is, you have served as board chair, in your experience as board chair, and just serving as a non-board chair member, what elements or characteristics are most important in your view in developing and maintaining a productive and healthy board culture?

Lina: Well, my bias, and we all have our biases, but mine is very much about communication, right?

Joe: Hmm.

Lina: Boards are made up just like senior leadership teams within executives and companies of all personalities; extroverts, introverts, those that are more analytical, lateral and linear thinkers, so I want to appreciate and everyone brings value. I just want to have an awareness to either encourage more dialogue. If someone hasn’t spoken up on a particular issue, I might just gently ask some people.

So, it’s about just [00:14:00] taking the overall tone in the room; where are we? Are we agreeing? Do we set a few points? If there are some extremely difficult situations the company’s going through, have we adequately addressed it? If they’re highly political or highly challenging, may take it offline, may suggest we just have a single topic board call in follow up so we’re not getting distracted or going off agenda. It’s very important that we don’t divert.

Joe: To follow what you said, I think the best board members, if you speak with them or as I recruit them, the thing they most want in their board service is for their voice to be heard. So, to your point about kind of reaching out to board members to make sure their voice is heard, what else can you do to make sure that you bring out the best in board members?

Lina: Well, what I [00:15:00] do with a new member, onboarding new members and how we do that is critical. That it’s consistent, it’s values driven, not just content driven, and I just want to have a relationship with each individual. I encourage them to reach out, ask questions, because at the core it’s a transactional relationship. Members are there to add value. I want to know what each director wants, and are we supplying that? Are they engaged enough or not enough? So, it’s very much just checking in.

Joe: What do you think the most important characteristics for a really effective board chair would be?

Lina: I think certainly highly skilled interpersonally, very good at diagnostics, understanding verbal and the non-verbal cues in a room, and that’s how you best facilitate. [00:16:00] 

Joe: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Raza: Linda, you have both chaired audit committees and risk committees, and you’ve also chaired committees that have both of these functions in one committee itself. How do you view this conversation that we’ve had many times on the podcast, whether these should be two separate committees and in what circumstances does it make sense for these to be one committee, for example?

Lina: Well, from my experience, it’s often the size of the company and for say smaller to midcap listed, I tend to be a combined committee. It’s kind of the discretion of the chair as well, but there are a couple of considerations. There’s also time because most directors serve on two committees, so it’s often resource driven as well as time and expertise. I think it’s whatever works for the [00:17:00] company.

Raza: I think size is definitely a good and important factor. Sometimes I think the type of industry or business could also drive that and if the risk function, which is more kind of should be forward looking or around the corner looking versus the audit function, which is the fact based, what has happened function, depending on the industry. Maybe for a bank for example, it might be more important to separate them out, but I think there are arguments on both and not a universal right answer.

Joe: I think there are more boards considering separate committees, and sometimes it is size. Obviously, for a really large company, the complexities might really dictate having a separate risk committee, but as Raza was saying, and it’s also the type of company, and I guess the risks in the future that are sometimes not so easy to really address in an audit kind of setting. Have you found that the case in any of the boards you’ve [00:18:00] sat on?

Lina: Yes. Sometimes we will form, depending on what needs to be addressed, an ad hoc committee to drill down into a particular risk that’s presenting itself. Not all the time, but obviously some acute event or something that’s directly impacting that particular industry. It could be a regulatory issue, it could be a war zone, it could be supply chain, it could be a number of issues that require a real drill down.

So, a good example of probably the last two years is just ESG and sustainability, huge and growing topics for boards, setting up individual committees or drilling down in response to new regulatory change.

Raza: I think beyond a certain size of a company or board, all the arguments or things that you mentioned, Linda, it speaks to what we’ve talked often now, and we call it the waterfront or [00:19:00] Christopher Marabley called it the waterfront that the board has to deal with, and that has increased substantially over the last 15, 20 years, and I think that itself, meaning the boards have to be now aware and governing many more types of risks that were usually or traditionally there, and that actually has become a big reason for that shift that Joe has been talking, that many, many boards are talking about it and want to think about it separately.

Lina: It’s really risen to this sort of number one responsibility of all fiduciary, et cetera, but it’s really the board holds that ultimate responsibility to manage, to anticipate, to ensure that we’re equipped to respond, that we’re giving the management enough support to respond, and that can come in many different ways.

Raza: Well said.[00:20:00] 

Joe: I think one of the things you said when we talked a couple of weeks ago was that current geopolitical situations makes risk management more of a priority. Can you just cite some example or just explain that a little bit?

Lina: Well, certainly in the last even six months in the world, whether it’s the US, the European Commission, Central and Eastern Europe, Israel, Gaza, there’re just so many really turbulent and changing environments, and I think independent directors need to really up our own learning and game as to an awareness and in turn, making sure we’re nimble and flexible enough to respond in real time.

There just so many factors and the world has escalated in terms of just levels of risk I think particularly [00:21:00] this year in the world, well, the last couple years in the world, and this will only continue. 

Joe: That’s for sure. One of the things we talked about was your view that the evolution of board recruitment has really changed, I think you used the words drastically in the last 20 years. What have you observed about how board recruitment has changed?

Lina: I think that as an industry, even search firms didn’t use to even say there were board specialty areas. Now that’s a whole practice within executive search, so the processes have evolved. It’s almost aligned with the sophistication of board recruitment. Years ago, there was no search firm conversation. The first several boards I served on, I was just tapped by industry, “Look, we will be looking for X, would you have time and capacity? We’re looking for certain skill sets.” So, it sort of was driven that way, and then it’s just become more formalized.

Joe: [00:22:00] Do you think there’s any difference in how recruitment has developed in the US versus in Europe?

Lina: Overall, not so much, right?

Joe: Hmm.

Lina: It was my experience that it used to be in Europe, it was a little more informal. It was very specific. It was very strategic, but you were tapped and you went through a very rigorous process, but you went straight to the nom gov committee, you were inserted on personal references of so many people, which has its pros and cons. My experience is, it was helpful because it was a more expedited process as opposed to six to 12 months in the works, but I just think that it’s a more formalized process today.

Raza: It is. Linda, one other thing that’s now in everybody’s face is AI, and it also is one of those things that [00:23:00] does not seem to be going away and in fact increasing. What is your view on how boards ought to be dealing with this thing called AI?

Lina: I appreciate the question because it’s such an intense topic at every level. It has implications of security, the benefits, the risks, the level of investment companies need to make, and the pace of that change and learning is exponential, and I think AI has been used in various forms for decades.

But today it’s really about generative AI and it’s triggered a widespread discussion on the benefits and risk across economies and wider society. It has implications of every aspect of society and boards have a responsibility for overseeing these [00:24:00] implications for their organizational strategy, risk management and how directors lead, where relevant. It’s very much to identify the opportunities and mitigate the risks.

There are new tools, literally the technology of this. How does one operate? Do boards that operate with more ChatGPT in terms of maybe preparations, and just boards need to identify and be more mindful and adapt to the approach for governance, and it’s changing by the day. So, it’s a very exciting disruptor and it’s a very daunting one at the same time. 

Joe: So, it’s interesting, one of the presenters at our summit next month is a former guest on the podcast, Raffaela Rein, who is one of the people developing what I’m going to refer to as a boardroom bot, and they’re being developed all over the world.

We’ve talked to other guests that are [00:25:00] doing it, and the conversation has often led to the question, so initially there’ll be some issues, but eventually if you can have an AI assistant, let’s say, who takes 300 pages of board book and summarize it for a board member and looks at resources and provides the resources to the board member, and then provides the board member questions. Then the question I have raised is, what would be the reason that there would eventually be more AI bots participating in a board meeting than humans.

Because if you think about it, if they’re doing all that work and the only thing that the board member is doing is reading what the AI has prepared, and I’m not saying this is a bad thing. The statistics about percentages of board members that don’t actually read all the materials, [00:26:00] I mean, it varies, but it’s huge. And it’s surprising to me. I mean, it really is. If it’s an AI bot, you know that they’ve absorbed it, they may not do a good job, but at least they’ve read it all. So, I’m just curious what you think about AI in the boardroom in terms of the use of a board-approved assistant that is actually doing all the summarizing for all the board members and providing different questions depending on how they’ve prompted it.

Lina: Yes. Well, it’s an important point and it’s quite new and evolving quickly. I think that, for me, it’s a tool, it’s a technique, it’s a process for efficiency when used properly for efficiency. It’s very easy to tell when board members are prepared or not prepared. And all of this falls into the category of when are tools useful and when are they not. [00:27:00] So, never would they get in the way of the personal discussion.

I think that as a tool, these board bots or however one is utilizing AI and different members are more sophisticated than others and have bias to using more techniques or tools than others, which is all fine, I think that’s individual. And if it’s a board tool and supplement that one can choose to use to your point, or bots, excellent if it’s helping the quality and the content of that discussion.

Think more importantly it’s a global race. AI is a global race. It’s now strategic, ethical, values driven, more than just fact. So, I think the human element of discretion and insight is critical to always know the line of technical and [00:28:00] bot-expertly-fed conversations versus sort of human thoughtful conversations in dialogue.

Raza: Linda, I think all of that will work and it’ll work as a tool until the day that AI is allowed to vote as a board member. I think that’s the question. That’s a little bit in the future, but right now I think it’s a great time for boards in that sense that it will help all of us make things manageable.

In some ways it is AI versus AI because all the materials that the board members that we’re getting is now getting generated with AI and we’re using AI to summarize it so we can understand it better. So, these are good times, but we’ll see what the future holds in terms of the vote part.

Lina: We will, and I certainly don’t have a crystal ball in that area.

Joe: Yeah, I don’t either, but I’m going to predict anyway. I don’t think it’ll be as long as you think

Raza: Yeah, I agree.

Joe: Linda, it’s been great speaking with you today. Thanks so much for joining us on On [00:29:00] Boards.

Lina: My pleasure.

Joe: And thank you all for listening to On Boards with our guest, Linda McGoldrick.

Raza: Please visit our website at OnBoardsPodcast.com. That’s OnBoardsPodcast.com. We’d love to hear your comments, suggestions, and feedback. If you’re not already a subscriber, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember to leave us a five-star review.

Joe: And please tune in for the next episode of On Boards. Thank you.