DEAR ASPIRING DIRECTOR
A board seat is not a trophy. It is an exchange.
There is a particular conversation I have been having with increasing frequency.
A woman arrives accomplished, credentialed, ready for her next chapter. She has built something, led something, or sat in a C-suite long enough to know the terrain. And she has decided, with clarity and conviction, that her next milestone is a board seat. She says it the way women say things they have earned the right to want: with quiet certainty, with the confidence of someone who has already done the harder thing.
I listen. And then I ask the question that changes the temperature of the conversation.
What specifically do you bring to the board you are targeting — and what are you prepared to be held accountable for?
The silence that follows tells me something important: for too many accomplished women, the board seat has become the next trophy. The credential that signals arrival at a new level of professional life. Something to be pursued, attained, and displayed as evidence of how far she has come.
I understand the impulse. I honour the ambition. And I want to offer a more useful frame.
It Is Not a Trophy. It Is an Exchange.
A directorship is a transaction. An exchange of specific value between a person and an organisation — governed by law, regulated by code, and carrying consequences that extend well beyond the title on a business card.
You bring your expertise, your networks, your independent judgment, your sector knowledge, and your willingness to ask the questions that management may not want to hear. The organisation grants you access, influence, remuneration, and the credibility of association. When both sides of that exchange are strong, the relationship creates value. When a director was appointed for her title rather than her contribution, for her gender rather than her governance capability, the relationship fails. The woman suffers most, because she becomes the evidence people reach for when they argue that female directors are decorative rather than decisive.
The aspiring director who pursues a seat as a trophy is, without knowing it, making the path harder for every woman who follows her.
What Nobody Tells You About Personal Liability
This is the part of the directorship conversation that happens least often and matters most.
Directors can be personally liable. Not the company, you. Personally.
In Nigeria, under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, directors carry fiduciary duties to the organisation and its shareholders. Breach of those duties — through negligence, through failure to exercise independent judgment, through approving transactions without adequate scrutiny, through signing off on financial statements not properly examined — can expose a director to personal legal and financial consequences that no remuneration package compensates for.
I have watched women accept board seats without reading the articles of association. Without understanding the governance obligations of the committees they have been appointed to chair. Without asking what the organisation’s directors and officers insurance actually covers. Without knowing whether there are existing disputes or regulatory exposures a reasonable director would want to understand before accepting the appointment.
The excitement of being asked is real. The urgency of saying yes before someone changes their mind is real. But the liability is also real. Before you accept a board appointment, read the documents. All of them. Ask about the insurance. Ask whether there are pending matters the board is managing. If you do not know how to ask these questions confidently, get advice before you accept — not after.
A seat accepted in ignorance of its obligations is not an achievement. It is an exposure.
Showing Up Ready
Governance literacy is learnable, and it is not the same as corporate experience. A director does not manage. She governs. She reads the board papers before the meeting, not during it. She challenges the recommendations she disagrees with; clearly, specifically, and on the record. She understands the financial statements well enough to ask the question others in the room have avoided. She maintains her independence because her value is her uncompromised judgment, not her alignment.
Women tend to over-index on qualifications when pursuing board positions. That rigour is a genuine asset, because technical expertise in governance, finance, risk, ESG, and emerging areas like AI is becoming a real competitive edge as regulatory requirements increase and boards face greater accountability. Build that knowledge. It matters.
But also understand this: most boards are still largely shaped by connection. Access is not always determined by technical excellence alone. The woman who maps the power blocks in her target industry — who understands who sits on what board, who makes the appointments, what the real decision criteria are — is the woman who positions herself strategically rather than waiting to be discovered. Intelligent mapping is not manipulation. It is how board appointments actually work.
And do not only target the large publicly listed companies. Private companies and smaller listed entities offer something the flagship boards often cannot — the space to actually learn. Governance experience deepens faster when you are exercising it, not performing it. Build the track record. The larger boards follow.
The Financial Reality You Need To Hear
Very few boards in Africa pay well enough to change a woman’s financial trajectory.
Say that again slowly, because it matters: the directorship you are pursuing is unlikely to materially transform your wealth. The work is significant. The preparation is substantial. The liability is real. The remuneration, in most African markets, is modest relative to all three.
A woman who pursues multiple board seats under the impression that they will build her personal fortune is likely to discover, often too late, that she has traded time she could have spent building investments for an income stream that does not compound.
Be selective about how many boards you can genuinely serve. One seat held with full attention and real contribution is worth considerably more — in reputation, in network, in governance development — than three held at the surface level while your investment portfolio goes unbuilt. Whatever you earn from directorship, invest it. Treat the income as capital, not consumption. That decision alone will do more for your long-term financial architecture than the seat itself.
Stewardship Is Not Ownership
Here is the reframe this entire letter has been building toward.
The board seat is stewardship. You are holding responsibility in trust, for the organisation, its shareholders, its people, its future. That is honourable work. It is necessary work. But stewardship is not ownership. And the distinction matters enormously for a woman who is designing her wealth rather than simply accumulating her credentials.
Ownership builds generational wealth. Stewardship builds reputation and experience. Both have value. But they are not the same, and a woman who has spent a decade pursuing board seats with the energy and strategic intelligence she could have applied to building her own investment portfolio will arrive at fifty with an impressive CV and an underbuilt financial life.
Chase boards with intention. Chase investment with the same intelligence. The woman who sits on two boards and holds a growing portfolio of personal investments is in a fundamentally different financial position than the woman who sits on four boards and has invested nothing beyond the time the role demands.
We chase directorships the way we should be chasing investment. The board seat is where you lend your expertise. The investment is where you build your future. Do both. But never confuse them.
For now: before you pursue the next board appointment, answer two questions — not what you want from the seat, but what you specifically bring to it; and whether the time it will require could build more long-term wealth if invested elsewhere. Both answers matter. The second one is the one most aspiring directors have never asked.
