My contribution to a board
I would bring a board the view from the shop floor of a company whose frontline employees are spread across hundreds of small towns. I have run stores, districts and a region, led asset protection for about 900 stores and served as chief executive of a 1,140-store chain. I know how a policy approved at headquarters reaches a store with two people on shift, and I can usually tell a board where a plan will strain before the first quarter's figures show it.
I also bring direct experience of sponsor ownership: a value-creation plan, a dividend recapitalisation, management equity and preparation for an exit. Companies with a sponsor or a founding family on the register often need someone who has sat between the two and can put the long-term operating case in terms a fund will accept, while being candid with the family about what a fund needs.
I am not a financial expert in the sense an audit committee requires, and I would not claim to be. My natural committees are compensation, where frontline pay and executive incentives meet, and a safety or risk committee where one exists. I would not chair a committee until I had sat through a full year of its work as a member.
Judgement in practice
01Declaring what I stood to gain before a dividend vote
When Stonebeck proposed a US$280 million recapitalisation in 2024, I believed a smaller dividend with no store sale-leaseback was right for the company. I also stood to receive about US$4.4 million from the larger dividend through my management equity, and about US$1.9 million from the smaller one. Before the board met I wrote to our chair with both figures, asked that our non-management directors take their own financial advice and said I would abstain. The recommendation I argued for paid me less, but that did not make it disinterested, and I did not want the board to weigh it as if it were. The adviser tested our lease analysis, the board approved a US$120 million dividend and it overruled me on the distribution centre. As a non-executive I would expect management to disclose interests in dollars rather than in categories, and I would ask for that when they did not.
02Taking safety out of the shrink budget
In 2022 our board was offered two responses to rising robberies and losses at closing time: locked cases and guards in 120 stores for about US$6 million a year, or a second person on every close at a net cost of about US$11.8 million. Framed as a shrink decision, the cheaper option looked stronger. I asked the board to make two separate decisions: one on how many people should be in a store at closing, judged on safety alone, and one on shrink, taken after we had broken our losses down by cause. Some directors were uneasy about approving labour cost that would not pay for itself. The board accepted the split. Robberies fell from forty-seven to fourteen, and shrink fell once we fixed receiving errors. On another board I would watch for decisions where one measure is being used to justify or block a choice that ought to be judged on its own terms.
03Leaving the room when a grant would have helped my company
In 2025 the Larchwood Rural Health Foundation, where I chair the grants committee, received an application to fund equipment for a remote dispensing site that would have operated inside a Marrick store. The project was worthwhile, and it would also have brought customers to our store. I declared the interest, handed the application to another committee member and left the discussion. I then proposed that the foundation adopt a written rule for grants that benefit a director's employer, which its board approved later that year. The grant was made on a reduced scale. On a corporate board I would apply the same discipline to related-party matters: declare, leave the room and help the board write a rule, so that the next case does not depend on anyone's goodwill.
My first year on a board
Before accepting a seat I would want to read the minutes of the last two years, meet each committee chair and spend a day in the company's operations without an escort, whether that means a store, a plant, a clinic or a call centre. I would also want my own board's consent in writing and an agreed limit on my time.
Once appointed, my first questions would be about the frontline. I would ask management which measures tell them whether a policy reaches the people who carry it out: turnover in supervisory roles, safety incidents, the gap between scheduled and worked hours, complaints that reach a regulator. Where those measures do not exist, I would ask why before proposing that they should.
For the first two or three meetings I would mainly listen, and I would hold back from recommendations unless I saw a safety or disclosure risk that could not wait. After six months I would ask the chair for a frank view of whether my retail frame was helping the board or narrowing it, and I would expect to adjust. By the end of the year I would want to be able to explain the company's economics on one page without notes, and to know which of its frontline managers I would trust with bad news.
Conflicts and their management
My first obligation is to Marrick and its shareholders, and any outside seat would need approval from our board, which includes Stonebeck's partners. That approval would not settle my position elsewhere, so I would set out the ways I could be conflicted before any formal conversation began.
Some categories I would rule out entirely: any retailer competing for the same household spending in small towns, whether discount, grocery, pharmacy or farm and home; any company that supplies Marrick with goods or services above a modest threshold; any company owned by a Stonebeck fund; and any lender in Marrick's credit facilities. I would also disclose my management equity in Marrick, my directorship of the Larchwood Rural Health Foundation and the commercial relationship between Marrick and the pharmacist-owners we host.
Other conflicts appear only later, for example when a company I serve begins to sell through discount retailers or bids for business that touches Marrick. If that happened I would tell the chair, step out of the relevant discussion and ask for the minutes to record it. If the conflict became structural, I would resign. Marrick's information, including our sourcing costs and store data, would stay out of any other boardroom, however useful it seemed.
My independence statement
I lead Marrick Variety Stores and hold management equity in it, so I am not independent of Marrick or of Stonebeck Capital Partners. For any other company I would set out my employment, shareholdings, directorships and business relationships in full and leave the judgement of my independence to that board under its exchange's listing standards, including the further tests that apply to compensation committee members. Until that judgement is made I would not call myself an independent director.
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Marrick Variety Stores
Board of directors, as the only executive director; attends audit and compensation committees by invitation
May 2021–present
Management director of a private company with a sponsor majority, a family minority and an independent chair; abstained from the 2024 dividend vote after declaring an interest.
Served as a director
Larchwood Rural Health Foundation
Board of directors; grants committee chair from 2024; finance committee member
2022–present
Director of a not-for-profit funder of rural clinics in south-west Missouri, south-east Kansas and north-east Oklahoma; leads the committee that recommends grants of about US$3m a year.
Reported to a committee
Marrick Variety Stores
Audit committee
2021–present
Reports each year on shrink by cause, inventory controls and store safety incidents, with the head of asset protection.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Marrick Variety Stores
Full board
2019–2021
As chief operating officer, presented the pandemic operating plan, store opening programme and receiving controls.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Brannock Food Stores
Family board of directors
2015–2019
Presented store operations results and the 2017 pharmacy review that led to fourteen closures.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is maintained in India for people seeking independent directorships of Indian companies. It has no bearing on the US appointments I am considering, and I have not registered. For a US listed company, my independence would be judged by its board under NYSE or Nasdaq listing standards.
- A director-education programme on audit committee practice for non-financial directors, completed in 2024
- A two-day programme on compensation committee practice for prospective public-company directors, 2025
- Annual briefings from Marrick's auditors and counsel on director duties in a sponsor-owned company
- Not-for-profit board service since 2022, including grants committee chair from 2024
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Grants committee of a not-for-profit health funder (current) · A safety, operations or sustainability committee, after one full year as a member |
|---|
| Ready to join | Compensation committee · Nominating and governance committee · Safety or risk committee of a company with a large frontline workforce |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 24 days per year
- Current directorships
- 2
- Sectors
- Rural and community healthcare providers · Consumer products companies that do not sell to Marrick · Regional utilities, transport and service businesses with dispersed frontline workforces
- Company type
- US listed mid-cap company or a large not-for-profit health system with an established committee structure
- Company stage
- A business with a dispersed frontline workforce going through a change of ownership, footprint or cost base
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one independent directorship of a US listed mid-cap company or a large not-for-profit health system whose operations depend on a dispersed frontline workforce, ideally with a presence in rural communities. Rural healthcare providers, consumer products companies that do not sell to Marrick, and regional service businesses such as utilities or transport operators are the settings where my experience would transfer most directly. I would like to join the compensation committee and a safety or risk committee where one exists. Because I am a serving chief executive, I would hold only one outside public-company seat, in line with what investors generally expect of sitting chief executives. I am not interested in a seat offered for a retail title alone, and before taking a conversation further I would want to hear the chair's view of what the board currently lacks.