Kai Boschmann, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, at InternationalSOS, has recently completed the Financial Times Non-Executive Director Diploma, which she modestly describes as an interesting learning experience. She highly recommends it, even if you have many years of board level exposure and experience.
The FT NED Diploma is an intense 6 months of post-graduate level distant and part time study during which you tackle various business assignments. An inspired buddy system means you pair up with the same person for each task. ‘You have different approaches from each other, you collaborate and you contribute different things to each assignment,’ Kai says. ‘The pairing keeps you on deadline and the results are stronger.’
The Diploma doesn’t come lightly. It is hard work and challenging in terms of time and investment, on top of a busy work agenda and travel, but it’s a great life experience and you meet like-minded and interesting people. ‘It helps you manage and govern board meetings or committees from many perspectives,’ says Kai. ‘For example, you learn about influencing teams of decision makers and about the psychology of managing a board, which is useful for any senior executive in an organisation.’
People on Kai’s Diploma course came from a wide variety of sector backgrounds and were representative of many countries in the world, different ethnicities and included a good representation of women. It was, as Kai remarks, an excellent, diverse footprint for the future company boardroom.
At f1 we know that if you look around the board rooms of most British companies you’ll see that Marketing and Communications are under-represented compared to functions like finance and compliance. Women are also under-represented. We champion the FT NED Diploma because we believe there should be a wider range of skills and experience at the most senior level. And because we help our candidates to develop their skills set all the way through their careers.
We send many congratulations to Kai. If you’d like to know more about the course click here