My contribution to a board
I would bring a board three things that are often thin when an organisation serves the public through software.
The first is an operator's view of large digital programmes. I have launched fare systems, rebuilt rider apps and changed a booking system that people with disabilities rely on to reach dialysis and work. I know where such programmes usually go wrong: in the conditions nobody tested, in the language and accessibility work left to the end, and in contracts whose incentives quietly point the wrong way. I can read a management paper on a digital programme and ask for the part that is missing.
The second is fluency in public obligations. I spent nine years inside two transit agencies and have sold to public buyers for most of the eighteen years since. I understand procurement rules, the difference between capital and operating budgets, the official-language and accessibility expectations placed on public bodies, and how privacy law treats a public body differently from a company. A Crown corporation, or a company that serves governments, needs directors who treat those obligations as part of the business rather than a fence around it.
The third is a habit of putting product risk before a board in plain numbers. At Halvery I report privacy incidents, accessibility gaps and degraded-mode failures to our Audit and Risk Committee in the same form as revenue: what happened, how many riders, what it cost and what we changed. I would ask management for the same.
I should be clear about my limits. I am financially literate and have reviewed audited statements for nine years as a not-for-profit director, but I am not an accountant. Canadian rules for most listed companies expect audit-committee members to be independent and financially literate, and I would serve on such a committee if asked, but I would not seek its chair. My strongest contribution is on risk, technology and privacy.
My first year on a board
My first year would be spent learning before advocating. Before the first meeting I would ask for the strategy, two years of board and committee minutes, the risk register, the latest internal-audit reports and any correspondence with regulators or privacy commissioners. I would also ask to use the organisation's main public-facing services as an ordinary customer would, including its telephone channel and its French service, and to read a sample of its complaints.
In the first six months I would meet the chief executive, the chief financial officer, the heads of technology, privacy and internal audit, and the external auditor, and ask each of them the same question: which risk does this board discuss too little? I would visit at least one operating site, because the digital service a board approves is rarely the one the front line ends up using.
For the rest of the year I would serve on committees without seeking a chair. I would keep a running list of the questions I had asked and whether the answers changed anything, and at the year's end I would give it to the board chair as part of the board's evaluation. If my questions had been more about my own industry than about theirs, I would want to be told.
Conflicts and their management
The plainest conflict is with my employer. I would not sit on the board of any transit agency, transit commission or regional transportation authority in Canada, because each is a Halvery customer or could become one. Nor would I join a company that supplies fare, vehicle-location, payment-processing or booking technology to transit, because each is a competitor, a partner or a supplier of ours. That rules out much of the sector I know best, which is exactly why my search lies outside it.
Brackenridge Lane Partners owns a majority of Halvery and holds other businesses. Before any appointment I would ask the firm for a list of its current holdings and decline a board with a commercial relationship with any of them, unless the appointing board, knowing the facts, judged it immaterial.
The second conflict is time. Halvery's board meets quarterly, and our heaviest seasons are winter launches and the spring procurement cycle. I would fix a year's meeting dates in advance, reserve twenty-four days including preparation, and tell the chair at once if Halvery's demands changed. If an unforeseen relationship emerged after appointment, I would disclose it in writing, leave the room for the relevant discussion and offer to resign if it was likely to recur.
My independence statement
I am an executive of Halvery and hold a small equity interest through its management incentive plan. Canadian securities rules and most Crown-corporation appointment processes ask, in different words, whether a director has a relationship that could reasonably be expected to interfere with independent judgement. That is for the appointing board to decide on full facts, and I would give it all of them: my Halvery role and equity, the other holdings of Brackenridge Lane Partners as far as I can learn them, my directorship at Thornhaven Access Society and any customer or supplier link, however indirect. I would not call myself independent until that board had concluded that I was.
Judgement in practice
01Telling a customer before the forensics were finished
In March 2024 a misconfigured analytics export sent trip records for about 3,100 riders of one agency to a planning contractor who should have received only aggregated data. The contractor reported it the same day and confirmed deletion. Our general counsel wanted a forensic review completed before we told the agency, which was responsible for the records under its provincial privacy law. I recommended telling the agency within 48 hours, with what we knew and what we did not, so that it could decide on its own obligations to riders and to its privacy commissioner. Our chief executive agreed. The agency notified the affected riders. I reported the incident and its causes to our Audit and Risk Committee at its next meeting, and every export of identifiable data now needs two approvals. As a director I would ask management whether a customer, a regulator or a rider has heard about an incident before the board has.
02Recommending that the board decline a data partnership
In 2022 a location-analytics company offered Halvery about C$1.2 million a year for de-identified trip-planner and tap data across our customers, to be resold to retailers and property developers. Our contracts arguably allowed it, and the revenue would have helped in a year when our pricing change was reducing income. I recommended that the board decline. The agencies had not collected the data for that purpose, their riders had not been asked, and movement data is harder to de-identify than it sounds, because a handful of origins and destinations can often identify a person. Two directors argued that a competitor would simply take the money. The board declined and asked me to write the restriction into every new contract. On another board I would ask of any new revenue built on data whether the people it describes would recognise it as the purpose they agreed to.
03Disclosing an accessibility gap before customers found it
In 2025 an internal review found that a redesign of our trip planner had broken screen-reader navigation in the list of route options on one phone platform for nine weeks. No agency had noticed and no rider had complained in writing. I told all 38 agencies that offer the app within the same week, released a fix twelve days later and reported the gap to our Audit and Risk Committee with the release-process change that would have caught it. Our sales leadership feared the disclosure would damage two bids in progress. One evaluator asked about it, and we kept both bids. The lesson I would carry to a board is that a disclosed gap with a dated fix is a manageable matter, while a hidden one becomes a question about the whole organisation.