MOB Fellows Program
Fifteen months in all: twelve weeks of governance formation, a supported twelve-month candidacy, and a confidential forum of peers running through every month of it. The program is delivered online, so that fellows may remain in post, and the class gathers twice in person — in New York, and in San Francisco.
Learning Design
How the program's hours are allocated.
Governance is not learned from lectures alone. The Fellowship is designed so that a substantial share of every fellow's time is spent working real problems alongside peers, and being assessed by people who sit on boards today.
35%
Faculty-led seminars and masterclasses — sitting directors, governance counsel, former regulators, and search partners.
25%
Simulation and assessment — the mock board, the crisis tabletop, and the graded capstone.
40%
Peer learning — the monthly forum, case clinics, and cohort work.
Stated as design intent for the founding class.
Core Themes
Five themes across fifteen months.
Govern yourself
The shift from operator to fiduciary. Duties of care and loyalty, oversight liability, the board–management line, and the discipline of asking rather than solving.
Govern the numbers
Financial statements as oversight instruments. The audit committee, internal control over financial reporting, and the patterns that precede restatements.
Govern the machines
AI and cybersecurity at board altitude. SEC disclosure, materiality under a running clock, EU AI Act exposure, and risk rendered as a dashboard a non-technical director can act on.
Govern the room
Boardroom craft. Influence as the newest voice, dissent without drama, CEO succession, executive compensation, and the failure modes of technical directors.
Govern your path
Positioning and the board search: how searches actually run, the board profile, interviewing as a director rather than as an executive, evaluating an opportunity before accepting it, and the first year in the seat.
See the week-by-week curriculum →
What It Entails
What the Fellowship comprises.
12 Seminars
Weekly, live, practitioner-led. Four to six hours a week including preparation, built around the schedule of a working executive.
15 Forums
Monthly, two hours, in a confidential group of five fellows chaired by a sitting public company director. Three during Board Preparation, twelve during the Search Year, and continuing after graduation.
Two Convenings
Two days in New York and three in San Francisco. New York is the boardroom and capital markets convening; San Francisco carries the simulations and the assessment. Five days away from the desk across fifteen months.
One Assessment
The graded capstone, conducted before a panel of sitting directors against a published five-dimension rubric. Required to carry the designation.
One Mentor
A sitting or recently retired director, matched one-to-one, for the length of the program and into the Search Year.
One Thought Leadership Project
A published governance point of view — a research note, an industry piece, or a board-facing analysis — placed in a venue directors read.
12-Month Search Year
Profile and database placement, two curated introductions a month, vetted slates to searches carrying AI or cyber specifications, and speaking placement.
One Directors Summit
An annual convening where fellows present domain outlooks to nominating chairs, chief executives, and search partners. Attendance is expected during the fellowship.
Board Preparation
Twelve weeks
An education in governance, taught at board altitude.
Fellows arrive already expert in their domains, and so the curriculum does not teach technology. It teaches the altitude at which boards operate, and the particular fluencies a nominating committee looks for in a first-time director. Seminars are led by practitioners, the class works cases together, and the forum meets from the first month.
The Convenings
The program is delivered online. Twice across the fifteen months, the class gathers.
Fellows remain in post throughout, and the weekly seminars and monthly forums are held live and online. But judgment is formed in rooms, and relationships are not built over video. The class therefore comes together twice, in the two cities where this work is done, and the two convenings fall at deliberately different points in a fellow's fifteen months.
San Francisco
Three days
Month 3
The assessment convening, held where the technology is built. It closes Board Preparation and carries the mock board, the ransomware-and-AI crisis tabletop run with practicing counsel, and the graded capstone before a panel of sitting directors. A fellow leaves San Francisco holding the designation.
New York
Two days
Month 9
The boardroom convening, held in the city where the boards, the search firms, the D&O market, and the capital sit. It falls in the middle of the Search Year, by which point a fellow has passed the assessment, published a governance point of view, and has something to be met about. Two days of working sessions and dinners alongside nominating and governance chairs, governance counsel, D&O underwriters, and the board practice leaders of executive search firms — and the MOB Directors Summit, at which fellows present.
Five days away from the desk across fifteen months. Attendance at both convenings is required.
Inside the San Francisco days
Mock board
A full simulated board meeting of a fictional mid-cap company, with issues embedded in the board book. Fellows rotate through seats, including the chair, while sitting directors observe and score.
Crisis tabletop
A ransomware event and an AI model failure unfolding together in real time, run with practicing counsel and crisis communications advisors. Fellows hold director seats and are assessed on how they oversee the response rather than manage it.
Assessment
The graded capstone, conducted before a panel of sitting directors against a published rubric.
The Search Year
Twelve months
The Search Year begins at graduation and runs for a year.
Months 1–2
Visibility
Board résumé, bio, and one-page profile rebuilt to the standard search firms circulate. LinkedIn rebuilt for director search by people who run those queries professionally. Profiles placed in the governance databases nominating committees use.
Months 1–12
Reach
Two curated introductions a month to nominating and governance chairs, search consultants, and sitting directors, each preceded by a preparation brief. A speaking platform, including at least one governance talk delivered on a stage the program will secure if market opportunities are slow to arrive.
Ongoing
Slates
When a search carries an AI or cybersecurity specification, the program submits a vetted slate within forty-eight hours, at no cost to any party.
Monthly
Forum
The fellow's forum continues to meet, working live search decisions and first-year directorship questions as they arise.
Month 9
New York
The boardroom convening and the Directors Summit. Two days among the people who fill board seats, at the point in the year when a fellow has most to show them.
The Forum
Forty percent of the program is peer learning, and the forum is where it happens.
Every fellow is seated in a forum of five, chaired by a sitting public company director. Forums meet monthly for two hours — three times during Board Preparation, twelve times during the Search Year, and onward into the alumni network. Composition is deliberately mixed across the three admission backgrounds and both domains.
Protocol
Strict confidentiality and equal airtime. Members speak from their own experience rather than giving advice, which is the discipline that makes the room useful and the reason senior executives tell the truth in it.
Format
A case clinic. One member brings a live governance question — a dilemma on a board they serve, a decision in their candidacy, a problem in the first year of a directorship — and the forum works it the way a board would.
The chair
A sitting director who observes each fellow across fifteen months of judgment under pressure. By graduation, the forum chair is generally the most credible governance reference a fellow has.
After graduation
The forum continues, and for most fellows becomes the most durable part of the fellowship: five governance-trained peers who follow each other's careers, compare board situations, and refer each other into searches for years.
Board appointments are made through relationships. A standing group of five governance-trained peers, chaired by a sitting director, is the most direct way the fellowship builds them.
Class Design
Twenty fellows, composed deliberately.
Each class is drawn from senior technology leaders across artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Sitting executives form the greater part of it, alongside recently exited leaders and founders, and the mix across sector, enterprise scale, and domain is intentional, so that a founder's currency sits beside an operator's scale and a veteran's judgment in every forum.
The founding class is MOB 1, convening in fall 2026. Classes are numbered, and fellows carry the class number with the designation.
Application details →
The Commitment
What the Fellowship asks of its fellows.
Four to six hours a week across the twelve-week Board Preparation, delivered online. Five days in person, two in New York and three in San Francisco. Two hours a month in forum for fifteen months. And a year of active candidacy that asks for real attention rather than passive membership. Fellows who cannot give the program that time are encouraged to apply for a later class. The class is small because the Fellowship intends to hold up its own side of the arrangement.
Apply to MOB 1