My contribution to a board
I would bring a board the view of a product leader who has spent his career where equipment meets the people who install, repair and live with it. My first decade was in a compressor laboratory and on a distributor's warranty desk, and my second in product management for controls and connected devices. For the past five years I have owned the product portfolio, product safety and service information at a heating and cooling manufacturer. That combination is uncommon, and it is useful to a board in three particular ways.
First, I can help a board read product safety as a governance matter rather than an engineering report. I have recommended a recall wider than the evidence strictly required, presented it to a committee and seen it through to a 78% remedy rate. I know what a quarterly safety report omits and what to ask about the field incidents behind its totals.
Second, I can help a board think about the move from mechanical to connected products: who owns the data, who may repair the equipment and how dealer and contractor channels respond when those answers change. These questions arrive at board level late, usually through a complaint, a lawsuit or a proposed statute.
Third, I have made portfolio decisions that gave up near-term revenue, such as stopping a furnace platform, and I can test whether management's product plan is following the market or defending the past. I would not offer myself as a financial expert for an audit committee.
Judgement in practice
01Asking a board committee to approve the wider recall
In 2023 I recommended recalling all 52,000 heat kits from a nine-month production period rather than the 14,000 traceable to a suspect supplier lot. Our chief financial officer and head of distribution preferred the narrower recall, which would have cost about US$5 million against US$16.8 million. I told the product safety and quality committee that the narrower option was defensible on our records and indefensible to a household with an untraceable kit, because the gap in lot codes was ours. The committee approved the full recall. I also told it that we had taken nineteen days after the second fire report to file, and that I thought that was too long. As a director, I would ask management how it decides the scope of a recall and how long it waits between a credible pattern and a report.
02Putting the dissent on the first page of the furnace paper
When I recommended stopping our new furnace platform in 2021, our sales leader opposed it in writing and our chief financial officer asked the board to see a plan funding both platforms. I placed both objections, and the alternative plan, on the first pages of the board paper, ahead of my own recommendation, with the revenue we expected to lose. The board approved the recommendation after a longer debate than I wanted, and furnace revenue then fell faster than my paper had forecast, which I reported. On a board I would ask to see the strongest internal objection to any major product decision, because a recommendation that has survived it is worth more than one that has not met it.
03Recusing myself from an equipment donation at Hearthline
In 2022 Ambersley offered Hearthline Home Repair Fund discounted equipment for a year on condition that the fund install only our brand. The offer would have stretched the fund's budget by about a fifth. I declared my interest and left the discussion, but before doing so I asked the chair to have the board consider what an exclusive arrangement would mean for the small contracting firms the fund relied on and for households whose existing equipment came from other makers. The board accepted the discount without the exclusivity, and Ambersley agreed. I learnt that recusal does not prevent a director from naming the question that others should examine.
My first year on a board
I would treat my first year on a board as an apprenticeship in that company's risks, organised around three questions rather than a calendar.
What does this company's product actually do in its customers' hands? Before my first meeting I would ask for the last two years of product-safety reports, warranty claims by failure mode and any recalls or service bulletins, and I would ask to spend a day with a dealer or service technician chosen by the company's channel team, not by its executives. I would read customer complaints in their original form, not only as summarised in the board papers.
Where do the board's papers stop? During my first meetings I would mostly listen and ask questions of fact. I would want to understand what the board sees about product safety, repairability and connected-product data, and what it does not, and I would raise any gap with the chair privately before raising it in the boardroom.
What do I not understand yet? Toward the end of the year I would ask the chair and one other director for a frank view of whether my questions had helped, and whether my background in heating equipment had narrowed my view of a different business. I would want to be judged on whether the board knew more about its products after my first year, not on how many proposals I had made.
Conflicts and their management
My employment at Ambersley is my primary commitment, and I would accept a seat only with our chief executive's agreement after a review by our general counsel.
The conflicts I would avoid are specific to my industry. I would not join the board of another heating and cooling equipment maker, a controls or thermostat company, a compressor or component supplier to Ambersley, a distributor that carries our products or a contractor group that installs them. I would also decline a company that competes with any of those businesses or depends on them for a large share of its revenue. Because I hold Ambersley shares through our employee stock ownership plan, I would disclose that holding and any dealings between Ambersley and the company or its suppliers.
Two further situations need care. If the company were considering a supplier, partner or acquisition with any link to Ambersley or its channel, I would disclose it, leave the discussion and ask for the recusal to be recorded. And I would never bring Ambersley's product plans, warranty data or safety findings into another boardroom, even where they seemed relevant; my experience can travel, but my employer's information cannot. If I found myself recusing regularly, I would offer my resignation rather than occupy a seat I could not fill.
My independence statement
I am employed by Ambersley and, as an employee owner, hold shares through its employee stock ownership plan. I would tell any board considering me about that holding, my directorship at Hearthline and any commercial dealings between Ambersley and the company, its suppliers or its dealers. Whether I can be treated as independent is for that board to decide under its own listing or governance standards, and I would wait for its view before using the word about myself.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Technology or product committee, after a full year as a member · Programme committee of a not-for-profit board |
|---|
| Ready to join | Technology and innovation committee · Product safety, quality or risk committee · Nominating and governance committee |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Hearthline Home Repair Fund
Board of directors; chair of the programme committee from 2023
September 2020–present
Director of a Springfield nonprofit that repairs or replaces failed heating for low-income homeowners; chairs the committee that sets eligibility rules and contractor standards.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Ambersley Climate Company
Board product safety and quality committee
March 2021–present
Presents the quarterly product-safety report, field-incident reviews and recall recommendations, including the 2023 heat-kit recall.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Ambersley Climate Company
Full board
2021–present
Presents the annual product plan and platform investment cases, including the 2021 recommendation to stop the furnace platform.
Reported to a committee
Ambersley Climate Company
Audit committee
2022–present
Provides field failure-rate data and the engineering basis for warranty reserve assumptions, and answers the committee's questions on them.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Quenby Controls
Board of directors of the private-equity-owned company
2013–2016
Presented connected-platform investment cases and the data-sharing position adopted for utility programmes.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 26 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Agricultural, outdoor power or specialty vehicle equipment sold through dealers · Residential building products with connected controls · Medical or assistive devices used in the home · Not-for-profit housing repair and energy assistance
- Company type
- Listed mid-cap or private-equity-owned manufacturer of durable equipment with embedded software, with a board that oversees product safety directly
- Company stage
- A company moving its products from mechanical to connected, or through a regulatory transition, where repairability and product safety need board attention
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one non-executive seat on the board of a listed mid-cap or private-equity-owned manufacturer of durable equipment that now carries software: agricultural or outdoor power equipment, specialty vehicles, residential building products or home medical devices. The best fit would be a company sold through dealers or contractors and going through a change in what its products report, who may repair them or how they are regulated. I would like to join a technology, product or risk committee and, after a full year, to chair one if the board wished. I would also welcome a second not-for-profit seat in housing repair or energy assistance. I am not seeking a seat where my value would be my employer's name or my industry contacts. Before taking a conversation further I would want to know how the board currently sees product safety, how it learns about field failures and what the company's dealers would say about its service information.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
India keeps the IICA Independent Directors' Databank for people who want to serve as independent directors of Indian companies. Every seat I am weighing is American, so that register has no bearing on my plans and I have not joined it. Here, a board judges a candidate's independence against its exchange's rules or, for a private company, its own governance policy.
- A director-education programme on board oversight of product safety and recalls, completed in 2024
- A two-day programme for prospective directors on audit and risk committee practice, 2025
- Six years as a Hearthline director, three of them chairing its programme committee
- Annual briefings from Ambersley's employee stock ownership plan trustee and independent valuation adviser