Reference: GILA/ID/TECH-039/EDTECH
Board seat: Independent Director, Non-Executive
Primary board location: Bengaluru; virtual-first with trust-and-safety reviews
Meeting model: Six board meetings, five technology-risk sessions and two model reviews
Mandate type: Risk, Cybersecurity, Technology & AI Director
Status: Confidential live-search specification; client identity released only after conflict clearance and NDA.
The anonymised enterprise
A listed digital learning platform serving school-age students and test-preparation learners through subscriptions, live classes and AI-assisted tutoring.
Registered users exceed 20 million; paid learners are a fraction of that base. The platform is deploying generative tutoring, automated assessment and teacher-assist tools across multiple Indian languages.
The board problem and strategic reason for appointment
The board must govern child safety, consent, hallucination, bias, marketing claims, teacher monitoring and data retention. AI adoption is material, but the seat requires risk judgement rather than model-building credentials alone.
The board is not buying a credential. It is appointing an independent decision-maker who can convert this problem into a governed sequence of choices, evidence and accountability. Success will be judged by the quality of decisions and control improvement, not by the number of recommendations made.
Board position, authority and interfaces
Chair of Technology, AI & Trust; member of Risk; private access to DPO, safety lead, internal audit and model-risk owners.
The appointee will have direct, unfiltered access to the Company Secretary and to the relevant control-function leaders. Any advisory support requested by the board must remain management-executed: the director sets questions, tolerances and evidence standards, but does not become an executive or consultant.
First 12–18 month strategic charter
- Approve prohibited uses and human-escalation rules for student-facing AI; test training-data rights, child consent and retention across legacy systems; validate learning-outcome and accuracy claims before marketing; establish severe-event protocols for harmful content, grooming, cheating and model leakage
- Translate technical risk into board decisions: risk appetite, investment priorities, accountable owners, recovery tolerances and customer consequences—not dashboards of vulnerabilities or model counts.
- Require independent testing of the severe-but-plausible scenario, including executive decision rehearsal, evidence preservation, regulatory/customer communication and recovery of critical services.
Decision profile sought
Essential evidence
- AI product-risk, child safety, education technology, privacy or platform-trust leader with board maturity; ability to challenge growth and pedagogy claims
Differentiators
- Multi-language model evaluation, online safety or consumer-protection experience; crisis governance involving minors
GILA will assess board-level technology judgement, operational resilience, adversarial questioning and enough technical depth to challenge management without becoming a shadow CIO or CISO. Candidates should expect a case discussion based on an ambiguous board decision from this mandate, not a career-history interview alone.
Independence, suitability and downside diligence
The search will apply Section 149(6), Sections 164–165, Schedule IV and the applicable listing or sector rules to the entity’s legally verified status at the appointment date. Databank/proficiency status, listed-entity directorship and committee ceilings, pecuniary relationships, relatives’ interests, recent audit/advisory work and interlocking directorships will be checked. The appointment is subject to formal legal and secretarial confirmation; this posting is not a substitute for that determination.
Mandate-specific screens: Investments in competing learning platforms, model vendors, publishers or school partners; advocacy positions preventing evidence-based judgement; current consultancy to management.
Before accepting the seat, the candidate will receive under NDA the latest board composition, committee charters, material litigation/regulatory schedule, related-party map, last audited accounts, current D&O policy and the specific risk papers necessary to make an informed liability assessment.
Twelve-month outcomes
The board expects a board that knows which digital failures can threaten the enterprise, what tolerances apply and whether recovery claims have been independently tested. For this particular seat, the evidence will be:
- All material AI use cases have risk tier, owner and release evidence; child-safety response tested; outcome/accuracy claims trace to independently reviewable methods
Commitment, protection and economics
- Expected load: 22–28 days annually.
- Terms: Five-year term; chair fee; cyber, privacy, media/professional and D&O coverage.
- Protection: Appointment letter, deed of indemnity where legally available, appropriate D&O cover including discovery/run-off terms, access to independent advice under the board-approved protocol, and complete minuting of dissent.
- Equity: No stock options where the appointment is legally an independent-director seat subject to Section 149(9). Any private-company structure outside that perimeter will be expressly classified and separately advised; no equity is implied by this posting.
Search process
Conflict pre-clearance → GILA/SYMPHONY™ board-fit interview → mandate case → document-led diligence under NDA → references from board peers and control functions → NRC/owner interviews → statutory, regulatory and reputation checks → board recommendation. Candidate consent, disclosures and appointment approvals will follow the law and the entity’s constitutional documents.