Meet the Director: Chris Mailander
By Chris Mailander | 02 Feb 2024
The corporate director explains why boards should be friendly to management without being friends.
My Home Base: Asheville, N.C.
Current Boards and Committees: Medici AI (advisory board), a New York City-based fintech focused on leveraging blockchain for institutional fund administration and secondary trading.
First Appointment: Fiduciary board of Atlas Organics, an organic waste recycler, which successfully exited to a $4 billion private equity firm in 2021.
Professional Background: I am a graduate of Georgetown Law, with an LLM in securities & financial regulation. Practicing law, however, was never my aspiration. Instead, I have worked with decision-makers around the world to achieve breakthroughs. What I learned over the past 30 years working with some of the world’s biggest brands, multinationals and national governments is that the line between success and failure is rarely determined by a sales strategy, financing or hiring plan. Instead, it is most often determined by how decisions are made.
Professional Associations: Private Directors Association.
Best Board Advice: “Don’t get too close.” One role of the director is to provide “healthy friction” in the decision-making process. You can be friendly, but you are not there to be a friend. Healthy friction helps to test underlying assumptions and provoke better argumentation. A healthy board is one that challenges management decisions in constructive ways, which, in turn, increases the probability of success.
Most Difficult Thing About Board Service: The ability of a director to affect change can often feel limited. It is tempting at times to get down in the weeds. The risk is that you get lost. The director’s duty to the company is to focus on provoking breakthroughs that create value and simultaneously tamp down risk.
Most Rewarding Thing About Board Service: Watching young, driven CEOs of private companies hit audacious objectives.
Personal Motto: Be comfortable being uncomfortable.