Top tips and actions about boards from active non-executive directors

Solai Valliappan
4 min readFeb 27, 2024

Every couple of years I make a significant investment in my career. So far this has involved a course and/or qualification.

Last year there was an uptick in the number of people asking me about my interest in joining a board. Following a board directorship path wasn’t top of mind until I noticed the question was increasing in frequency. Often during the conversation they would ask:

“Have you done the AICD course?”

From what I was hearing it sounded like a pre-requisite and so decided to do the course. If you’re interested in what I wish I knew in a bitesize manner before doing the course you can read about it here.

Photo by Scott Walsh on Unsplash

I wanted to know exactly what I should know as I embark on this career journey. In parallel with studying the AICD course I decided to seek some qualitative data from active directors and understand the trends (if any) of their experience.

I spoke to 20 non-executive directors (50/50 split between women and men).

Their experience was wide ranging and covered:

  • Not-for-Profit boards (small and national)
  • Regulatory and Government boards
  • Private company boards (startup, national, multinational)

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Solai Valliappan

Tech investor with an actuarial background interested in technology, startups, investing and data driven insights to influence system change.