My contribution to a board
I would bring the customer's experience of an organisation into board discussion as evidence rather than anecdote. Many boards receive satisfaction scores and complaint counts; fewer ask what customers were told, when, and whether it helped them decide anything. My experience is in services that customers cannot easily leave, where confidence is easy to neglect and slow to rebuild. I can help directors test whether a fare change, a service reduction or a campaign is being explained honestly, and whether management has separated the interests of different customer groups instead of averaging them into one score. I have presented to a board committee for ten years and served six years as a volunteer foundation director, but I have not held a commercial or statutory seat. I would learn the board's financial oversight from experienced colleagues and would not treat marketing as my only lens. I would also keep a clear line between oversight and management: a director should ask how a disruption protocol was agreed, not rewrite the notice.
My first year on a board
My first year would follow the board's calendar rather than a plan I arrived with. Before the first meeting I would ask the chair which customer or community questions the board finds hardest, and read the last two years of minutes on them. In the first quarter I would use the service as an ordinary customer, with management's knowledge, and spend a shift with the contact centre or front-line staff. By mid-year I would hope to understand how complaints, survey results and regulatory correspondence reach directors, and where they are summarised so heavily that their meaning disappears. I would also read the organisation's public notices from the past year as a customer would, and compare them with what the board was told at the time. I would raise suggestions through the committee chair before taking them to the full board. At the year's end I would ask the chair for a candid assessment, including whether my questions were useful or merely familiar from ferries.
Conflicts and their management
My most significant potential conflict involves provincial governments. Marelisse holds service agreements with three of them, and I prepare the customer sections of our renewal proposals. I could not sit on the board of a provincial transport agency or Crown corporation in those provinces, or of any body that influences those contracts, and I would decline a seat that came close. Other connections are narrower but real: tourism organisations that buy co-operative advertising with us, agencies and research firms we retain, carriers on annual agreements, and operators whose routes compete for the same travellers. I would list each for the nominating committee, with my chief executive's consent recorded in writing, before a first meeting. I would not carry Marelisse's pricing, carrier terms or community discussions into another boardroom. If recusals became frequent on matters central to the board's work, I would resign rather than remain a director absent from the decisions that count.
My independence statement
I hold no shares in, and receive no payments from, any organisation I would consider joining. My executive role at Marelisse, its provincial contracts and its commercial relationships would be disclosed in full, and the board would judge my independence against its own rules rather than rely on my description.
Judgement in practice
01Asking who carries the cost of a service reduction
During the 2023 vessel withdrawal, the board committee received a plan that protected residents and paused visitor marketing. The question I would now ask as a director is who carried the cost, and whether management had heard from them before deciding. In our case the island's tourism operators carried much of it and learnt of the decision late. A director need not reverse such a decision to improve it. Asking for the affected groups, the evidence of their losses and the communication plan before approval would have given management a reason to include them earlier. I would bring the same question to an airport authority reducing routes or a utility planning an outage: which customers bear the change, what were they told, and what remedy fits what they lost?
02Separating presentation from price in a fare decision
When I proposed the all-in cross-bay fare, our chief financial officer's objection about fuel exposure was correct, and the committee needed to see both arguments. Fare presentation and fare level are different decisions that a board paper can easily merge. A clearer price can look like an increase, and an unchanged price can conceal a fee. As a director I would ask management to show the customer's total cost before and after any change, the financial risk the company assumes by simplifying it, and how frequent customers will hear of it first. I would not expect a board to design a booking page. I would expect it to know whether a change of presentation shifts risk from customers to the company, or the reverse, and to approve that shift knowingly.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | Governance and nominating · Risk, including customer and reputational exposure |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 22 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Airport and port authorities · Co-operatives and community-owned enterprises · Regulated consumer services such as utilities
- Company type
- Not-for-profit authority, co-operative or privately held company with a public-service obligation and a clear separation between board and management
- Company stage
- Rebuilding customer confidence after a service failure, or preparing for the renewal of a public-service contract
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking a first independent seat with a Canadian organisation whose customers depend on it: a regional airport authority, a port or transit body outside the provinces where Marelisse holds contracts, a co-operative, or a regulated consumer service. I would most like to join a governance or risk committee that treats customer confidence and public communication as board matters. Chairing a committee is something I would leave until a second term, once I knew the organisation and its regulators well. Nor would I want a seat offered mainly because the board lacks a marketer; the useful question is whether its customers are heard accurately. A board considering me should expect questions about customers and communities, a willingness to learn its finances, and about twenty-two days of attention each year.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Marelisse Ferries
Board customer and community committee
September 2016–present
Presents fare proposals, disruption reviews and the annual resident survey; answers directors' questions; not a director.
Served as a director
Brisemarée Community Foundation
Board; grants committee and communications committee
2017–2023
Volunteer director of a regional community foundation for two three-year terms; reviewed grant recommendations and the foundation's public reporting.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian requirement and does not apply to a Canadian candidacy, so I have not registered. Eligibility and independence for a Canadian seat would be assessed under the organisation's governing statute and bylaws and, for a reporting issuer, the applicable securities rules.
- Completing a director education programme in 2026 covering fiduciary duties, financial oversight and committee practice.
- Reading audit and risk committee papers with the Marelisse chief financial officer to prepare for questions beyond marketing.
- Studying how Canadian securities rules on audit committee independence apply to reporting issuers.