Preparing AI and cybersecurity leaders for public company board service.
Each year the Fellowship selects twenty accomplished technology leaders and prepares them for the responsibilities of the boardroom, through fifteen months of governance formation, assessment by directors who currently serve, and a supported candidacy among peers who will know their work for the rest of their careers. The program is delivered online, so that fellows remain in post, and the class gathers twice across the fifteen months: in San Francisco, and in New York. The founding class convenes in fall 2026.
Boards have been made accountable for artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and the bench of directors equipped to govern them remains thin.
Public companies are now required to disclose how their boards oversee cybersecurity risk, and to report material incidents within four business days of determining that they matter. Accountability for artificial intelligence is arriving along the same path, through the EU AI Act, through insurers, and through the courts.
Nominating committees have responded by seeking directors who understand these domains from the inside, and the leaders who hold that understanding are not difficult to name. They are the chief information security officers, the chief AI officers, the chief technology officers and the founders who built and defended the systems on which enterprises now depend.
What most of them have not yet been given is a fiduciary education and a place among directors. The Fellowship exists to provide both.
Board Preparation, and then the Search Year.
The Fellowship runs for fifteen months. Board Preparation is an education in governance. The Search Year is the year that follows, in which fellows come to the attention of the boards, nominating chairs, and search professionals who fill these seats. The Fellowship offers the two together, on the understanding that preparation without access rarely produces a seat.
An education in governance, for leaders who remain in post.
Fellows meet weekly in live seminar with sitting directors, governance counsel, former regulators, and search professionals. The curriculum covers fiduciary duty and oversight liability, the financial statements and the work of the audit committee, and the translation of cyber risk and artificial intelligence into the language boards use, which is the language of materiality, disclosure, and capital. Board Preparation asks four to six hours a week and is delivered online. It closes with three days together in San Francisco, where the assessment is held.
Inside Board Preparation →A supported year as a board candidate.
On graduation each fellow enters a supported year. Their board biography and profile are rebuilt to the standard search firms circulate, and placed where nominating committees look. They are introduced, twice a month, to directors and search professionals. When a search carries an AI or cybersecurity specification, the Fellowship submits a vetted slate. Throughout, a sitting director mentors them, and their forum continues to meet.
Inside the Search Year →Every fellow sits in a forum of five, chaired by a director.
The forum is the Fellowship's peer structure, and it is where the greater part of the learning happens. Forums meet monthly for two hours: three times during Board Preparation, twelve times through the Search Year, and onward into the alumni community. Each is composed deliberately, drawing across the three backgrounds from which the Fellowship admits and across both domains, so that a founder's currency, an operator's scale, and a veteran's judgment are all present in the room.
Board appointments are made through relationships. A standing group of governance-trained peers, chaired by a serving director and held together for years, is the most direct means the Fellowship has of building them.
What the Fellowship undertakes.
Every fellow completes the program prepared, visible, and known to the people who fill board seats. The Fellowship reports on all three.
Board appointments turn on timing, turnover, and fit as surely as they turn on merit, and no program controls those things. The Fellowship therefore undertakes the preparation, the visibility, and the year of active support, and publishes what becomes of its fellows each year, beginning with the founding class.
Fellows are assessed against the standard a nominating committee applies.
Each fellow sits a board simulation before a panel of directors drawn from public company boards. The board book arrives seventy-two hours in advance. The session proceeds as a compressed meeting, including one development the fellow has not seen, and closes with questioning from the panel.
Fellows are assessed on five dimensions: fiduciary judgment, oversight altitude, financial fluency, domain translation, and presence in the room. The rubric is published to fellows at the outset, and the standard is held by directors who currently sit on boards.
The Fellowship admits from three backgrounds.
The bar is the same in each case: fifteen or more years of professional experience, accountability at enterprise scale, and authority in artificial intelligence or cybersecurity earned by building, securing, or governing at scale. Classes are limited to twenty fellows, and the limit does not move.
Admissions criteria →The designation is protected by a published charter.
Admission and assessment are determined without reference to partners or sponsors. Faculty drawn from partner firms teach governance practice, and partner products are not presented in the curriculum. A fellow's information reaches a partner only with that fellow's consent.
The Fellowship accepts no fee for a placement, from any party, and provides its slates to boards and search firms at no cost.
Partners fund the program on these terms because the terms are what make the credential worth their association. MOB Fellows is a program of 786 Endowment Fund, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its accounts are public.
Read the governance charter →Who the Fellowship is for.
Fifteen or more years, accountability at enterprise scale, and authority earned by building, securing, or governing. Admissions for the founding class are rolling.
Apply as a fellow →Sitting directors, search leaders, and governance counsel who are willing to teach, chair a forum, or assess a capstone. The smallest role is ninety minutes a year.
Join the faculty →Six category-exclusive founding partnerships, for firms working with boards on governance, risk, and technology.
Read the prospectus →A seat to fill with an AI or cybersecurity specification. A vetted slate arrives within forty-eight hours, at no cost to any party.
Request a slate →The founding class convenes in fall 2026.
Twenty fellows, admitted on a rolling basis. The second class convenes in spring 2027.