Wharton Affiliated Governance Hub

welcome May and thank you for joining us today oh thank you so much uh thanks everybody for giving me a few minutes to talk through uh what is happening at Wharton at the moment um just to situate this a bit for you I took over the zland center for corporate governance about a year ago and thus far it's really served as a site to fund research and from time to time uh conferences sometimes including practitioners and researchers but really a research Focus um and so we're trying to sort of expand Wharton's footprint in this area in the the practitioner world and I was talking with Maria not too long ago about the sorts of things that this group has been um rolling out recently and she had shared with me that a number of you have been writing thought pieces and and establishing your jurisdiction as thought leaders in various spaces through various Outlets and so I wanted to share with her what ala and I have been talking about which is rolling out this year a um Wharton Affiliated a governance Hub that we hope will become kind of a a first resource for a best practices and thought leadership uh in corporate governance and you know just to to um just toose this to what we see as our primary competition in the field uh you may be familiar with the um governance hubs at Harvard through HBS and hls together or through the Stanford Rock Center um those are wonderful resources but if you've ever uh explored them what you might notice is they they're in they're in really a conversation between researchers and service providers and so you'll have lawyers from law firms you'll have accountants you'll have the people that are kind of pedling their services to boards uh writing together on best practices and that is useful but I think what the field is missing and what Wharton is really best situated to deliver is the direct conversation between researchers and board members themselves and so that's why we wanted to to come to you um with an opportunity uh I want to show you kind of a mockup of what we're planning to do this year so I'm going to share my screen and show you what ala and I have been working on so this is a a mockup of the Hub that we're going to unroll this year uh and what you'll see is ala and I um have done an awful lot of pre U rollout research because we are also writing a book together but these are sort of the eight tiles that we see as really important um themes in the field that are top of mind for boards today and so we have uh shareholder and stakeholder activism uh Innovation including things like AI but also cyber security and the like uh implications of Dei uh a company's role in policy uh corporate governance in the private company setting uh organizational board culture the use of committees in the boardroom and a place for interesting themes and comparative governance trends that we're seeing when we compare um what's going on in the US on abroad um and so what we're g to be doing this year is is rolling out content under each of those tabs so I am going out and finding some thought leaders in the research space and Maria have so generously volunteered to help uh find and mobilize some voices within the practitioner space and so we wanted to offer all of you an opportunity if you're interested in participating in kind of curating content and um bringing together the themes in any of those tabs I just showed you to reach out to you and I think Maria will give you a few ways to to do that in a moment but reach out to us and we are going to create some kind of a loose structure around each of the them so that we can put some practitioners with um with researchers and develop some content at the Nexus of research and practice um I'm also going to be teaching corporate governance in our full-time MBA program and so my idea is to to involve some of our current Wharton MBA students as well by having them assigned to the different tabs to help collect and write up content interview some of you and those sorts of things and the final thing I'll have to say is we're getting a lot of support from the Wharton side in terms of resources so we have money to put toward this we have money to put toward conferences in each of these areas if we'd like um and also money to kind of curate um professional grade interviews uh help with copy editing really anything to make the content that we're providing you know uh best in the field and so I I think it's going to be a wonderful resource at the end of the day for highlighting Wharton's value add in the space and also giving you all an opportunity to kind of establish thought leadership in the spaces where you're most excited so thanks so much Maria for for giving me a chance to introduce that may can you tell us a little bit more about the zining center as well oh sure so the the zland center has been around for almost three decades now it was originally created as a center uh for the study of business ethics and when Erica James took over as Dean she wanted to broaden its mandate to become a center also devoted to corporate governance and a lot of the themes that the zland center has been a thought leader in historically are also governance themes so we we published for example you might have all come across um really the the best data available on um a variation in the transparency of corporate political activity and board's involvements in uh oversight of corporate political activity so that's the ziglin index which I think the center's been best known for thus far but I'm hoping with this the roll out of the governance Hub we're really going to be able to stake a claim in the governance space as well perfect there's also a question from Brooke um Efron in the chat is about the center I guess is the center free to W alumni yes so it's just the center is is absolutely free if you just you know Google zland Center you'll find the resources that we've curated thus far we haven't yet rolled out the governance Hub so we're hoping to populate each of those eight tiles and then roll the Hub out so that it'll be available to everyone te teachers practitioners students uh really everyone interested in in corporate governance um ideally we are aiming to have the roll out happen by the end of this calendar year perfect Maria I'll just say a couple just say a couple quick words just reinforcing what may said one of the most exciting things also and many of you must experience this is the focus on contemporary governance so everything that may said with regards to practical meets Academia that's one key thing the second key thing is there's so much written historically over over the years on corporate governance one of the key things is focusing on the trends that have happened over the past five eight years and if you look at that there's really been an inflection point in some of the differential uh the differentiating trends just keeping that in mind as well it's very exciting to look at it from a contemporary lens perspective and that's been really exciting but thank you perfect so with that go ahead go ahead May Maria you were going to you said share a QR code for people to yeah so I I just mentioned I shared the email right now for for people to raise a hand right now and and connect with us the QR code will be posted with the recording on our LinkedIn site and it will be also on our general notion site where we post all recordings so that you know individuals will have access I'd like to also to make sure that um individuals know members know the eight themes that you shared with us just so that they get their head around you know what those the the content pieces uh how they are structured right and just to to add one last thing those those eight themes are just the themes for the roll out of the center ultim Ely this is going to be like a Wiki where we can draw from our broader alumni and research pool to populate all different themes in governance so if there's something you're excited about that isn't you know part of those eight themes then let us know that too because we can develop kind of new corners of the The Hub as well perfect one last chance any questions before I stop the recording on on this um general information if not let let me stop recording