The NextGen Board Leaders program, sponsored by Wilson Sonsini and Meridian Compensation Partners, brings together experts and new public company board members under Chatham House Rule to discuss critical topics in corporate governance.

At a recent Summit, held at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), leading experts shared timely insights on the rapidly evolving landscape of executive compensation. Several critical themes emerged that are shaping boardroom conversations and governance practices today.

Boards are sharpening their focus on the structure and competitiveness of executive compensation, especially CEO pay. The goal: ensuring that compensation both attracts and retains top talent while maintaining a clear alignment with the company’s long-term strategy.

Executive transitions have also gained renewed importance, with robust succession planning and carefully structured separation packages rising to the top of committee agendas. These priorities reflect a growing expectation—from investors and other stakeholders alike—for transparent links between pay and performance.

The executive compensation environment is more complicated than ever—particularly for companies outside the S&P 500, including those in the Russell 3000 or recently public companies still maturing their governance frameworks.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) pay versus performance disclosure rules require companies to explain in detail how executive compensation ties to both financial and non-financial results. This has increased the demand for greater rigor in plan design and heightened pressure to clearly articulate the rationale behind every element of pay.

The widening gap between U.S. and international compensation practices shows little sign of narrowing. Meanwhile, periods of economic uncertainty caused by market volatility, global events like COVID, or shifting trade conditions, continue to complicate the selection and calibration of performance metrics and targets for leadership.

Boards must strike a balance: maintaining credibility with executives while guarding against potential corporate waste claims. Practical strategies include:

Maintaining consistency in financial metrics: Avoid shifting targets unless clearly warranted by changes in business conditions.

Scoping discretion tightly: Where discretion is needed, plan documents should include specific language for “extraordinary events” (e.g., leadership effectiveness during crises), paired with clear documentation of rationale.

Using relative performance metrics where appropriate: Comparing performance to peers, rather than absolute targets, can help isolate executive performance from broader market disruption.

While 'say-on-pay' voting outcomes remain largely steady, with low failure rates, scrutiny continues. Boards face ongoing pressure around:

Responsiveness to prior shareholder concerns

Transparency and discipline remain essential.

Best practices in compensation governance

Excellence in compensation governance hinges on strong processes. Boards are encouraged to maintain clear annual calendars for their compensation committees, ensuring all decisions align with committee charters and mandates.

This proactive approach enables early engagement with investors and proxy advisors, particularly on potentially controversial changes, helping to mitigate concerns before they become significant issues.

As the executive compensation landscape continues to evolve, boards that prioritize clarity, disciplined processes, and stakeholder engagement will be best positioned to navigate future challenges.

The Latest in Executive Compensation Trends: Insights from the NextGen Board Leaders East Coast Summit

You are one of a kind. An administrator that plays a behind-the-scenes but crucial role in helping your president, board chair and trustees all perform their roles better.

You are the glue that holds the board together — the calm in the chaos, the keeper of the agendas, the trustee whisperer and the fact-checker when someone says, “I think we voted on that last meeting... right?”

We gathered some ways you (and we) recognize the special qualities of the college board secretary and how the right board management solution (Diligent Community!) can help you do your job even better.

You never talk about “next month” or “after the holidays.” Your sense of time is based on board meeting schedules and deadlines. Is it really May? Who knows — but the budget meeting agenda was finalized, so the spring semester must be ending soon. Time for you is a pie chart divided into board cycles.

 The scheduling feature helps you to create meetings, and you can also add the calendar in Diligent Community to your personal calendar on MS Outlook, Google, etc. Additionally, staff and board members receive automatic notifications on agenda item approvals and when the meeting agenda is published.

2. Your board meeting agendas have more versions than a Hollywood script.

You spend more time formatting bullet points than eating lunch, and “final

FINAL_agenda.docx” definitely lives rent-free on your desktop. You wrestle each meeting agenda into submission and make sure it gets out to the board on time.

 is designed to streamline the process and remove roadblocks. You can use it to create agendas, attach documents, insert items and build and publish packets within a single digital tool. You can also share agendas securely with board and committee members, and making modifications to the agenda is quick and easy.

3. Your calendar looks like the flight map of a major airline – strategically designed with no room for error.

Committee meetings, agenda deadlines, board workshops, retreats, board/staff mixers — you have more layers on your calendar than a birthday cake. You’ve got your day scheduled down to the nanosecond as well as the next three months. You call it “your” calendar, but it’s also the tool you use to keep the board on schedule and on task.

 Diligent Community integrates meetings, committee work and documents in a centralized hub — with automated notifications that even trustees can’t ignore.

4. You take meeting minutes like you’re reporting for the history books.

You’re not just jotting down notes — you’re crafting a legally binding novella of governance, complete with timestamps, motions and the occasional dramatic pause.
While others are debating the finer points of parking lot resurfacing, you’re multitasking like a pro: capturing every word, keeping time and gently reminding folks that yes, someone 

 need to second that motion before they vote on it.
It’s part art, part science and part “please don’t talk over each other.” And somehow, you make it look easy — even if your stress ball is now shaped like a gavel.

 Templates for minutes can be modified/updated quickly to help streamline your minute-taking process. Automated distribution gets your minutes out quickly to the board and your community after meetings. And admins or board members can enter votes on the system which not only helps save time but all votes are digitally recorded.

Classic anxiety dreams — speaking in front of an audience in your underwear or being chased by Cujo — are not for you. Instead, you dream that you are at a board meeting with a150-pages board book with attachments... and you realize you uploaded the wrong version of the facilities report. You wake up in a cold sweat and immediately email yourself a reminder, just in case.

 The software tracks document versions and auto-updates the agenda — so no one gets the wrong version (including you at 3 a.m.). Approval workflows allow you to manage the submission and approval of agenda items through its customizable workflows feature. No need to lose sleep over version control.

6. You manage trustees so smoothly, they don’t even realize they’re being managed.

Getting trustees to submit bios, confirm attendance or turn in their annual ethics forms feels less like admin work and more like coaxing toddlers to clean up their toys. You’ve got it down to a science: gentle reminders, follow-up emails and the occasional “I brought pastry!” to lure them in to your campus office.

 Trustees get self-serve access to their documents, profiles and meeting materials, and can use any device, anytime — fewer emails for you, and fewer “where do I find..” and “can you resend that?” requests.

7. Your brain is a walking, talking board policy archive.

You’ve got the state’s open meetings law memorized like it’s your favorite song, and you can quote Robert’s Rules of Order like other people quote movie lines.

Need a policy from 2009? A board resolution from three presidents ago? You’ve got it — probably bookmarked, color-coded and backed up in triplicate.

But let’s be honest: if you ever caught the flu the day before a board meeting, the entire institution might descend into procedural chaos. Somewhere deep down, you know you should probably write a manual… but who has time when you’re busy being the human version of the college’s hard drive?

 The solution comes with a customizable document library, which provides a convenient, secure and centralized location to upload and manage your documents. You can structure the library so that it has searchable public content and internal folders to protect sensitive information. Information is searchable and easy to find, so staff, leaders, board members and the community can all get what they need.

8. You get teary eyed when you think about the services that the community college provides students and the public.

You’ve met students and heard their stories – the single mom who earned her nursing credentials, the Army veteran who learned computer coding skills and the young man who graduated from high school with his associate degree through dual enrollment credits. The institution serves the public and must maintain public trust. You support giving the public as access to the board’s decision-making process, though it’s sometimes difficult.

 Your public transparency website helps broker deeper and more engaged relationships with the public. Students and other community members can subscribe to receive upcoming meeting notifications, request to speak at publicly held meetings and have easy access to meeting agendas, minutes and policies. All helping higher education institutions to demonstrate transparency and build community trust.

9. You’ve become the livestreaming whizz — lights, camera, governance!

Sure, your job description didn’t mention “livestream producer,” but here you are — juggling HDMI cables, adjusting mic levels and praying the Wi-Fi holds steady. You’ve mastered the art of making a public board meeting look seamless online, even if behind the scenes it’s more “community theater tech rehearsal” than “network news broadcast.” Because when it comes to transparency, you’re not just opening the books — you’re opening the livestream, too.

: Livestream Manager helps make your whole livestreaming process easy and streamlined, and it even has AI-supported meeting minutes using your livestream transcript to speedily create accurate minutes.

10. You’ve considered adding “cat herder” to your job title.

Because sometimes that's just what it feels like. What more can we say?

Yes, the job can be demanding. The work is often unseen and unacknowledged. But you’re the silent architect of smooth governance, the champion of transparency, and the nerve center of college decision-making. You know that your role matters — and you do it with pride.

To all the community college board secretaries out there — we see you. And we built Diligent Community just for you, because you deserve support in your essential work.

 to find out how we can make life easier for you and your board.

10 signs that you’re a community college board secretary

This article originally appeared in our July 3rd edition of the Diligent Minute Newsletter. For more insights like these, delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe

Board members have a lot on their minds right now. They currently rank the level of risk U.S. businesses face just below 7 on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), according to the latest 

 by Diligent Institute and Corporate Board Member. Top issues include supply chain and inflation/currency risk, geopolitical fluctuations and changes in the regulatory environment along with widespread concern about the economic risk of tariffs.

These issues add to an already-long list of evergreen threats to a company’s business and bottom line — like a product failure, cyber attack, executive scandal or high-profile lawsuit — along with the aftermath. Too often, a negative headline triggers customer flight, investor panic or both, causing a ripple effect of legal, business and reputational challenges.

With the threat of crisis escalating and evolving by the day, Megan Baier’s session at the 

 was perfectly timed. A partner with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, she shared tips and best practices for crisis management.

The steps shared reflect common sense: Identify the issue, mitigate it and manage the communications. But they’re deceptively difficult to execute well under pressure — which is why boards need to be crisis-ready long before a negative incident breaks out.

Here are five top takeaways shared at the Summit on making that happen.

Key players include legal, audit, PR/IR, and bankers. But don’t get too carried away. Smaller groups typically make faster decisions.

It’s also important to equip team members with clear roles, responsibilities and lines of reporting.

A pre-built playbook should cover likely scenarios and the latest best practices, along with guidelines for reporting, disclosures and getting the word out via social media and other channels.

According to the latest Corporate Director Index, nearly half (47%) of boards are engaging in scenario planning to navigate the current crisis environment. In my opinion, this number should be much higher.

 are an excellent way for crisis team members to master their roles, share feedback and build their muscle memory for an effective response — all in a low-stress environment where mistakes are still learning experiences.

Takeaway 4: Find the line between transparency and protection

When something negative happens, investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders want to know. Competitors, activists, and regulators seek this information as well — but for very different reasons.

For boards, this means conflicting pressures to announce bad news quickly versus waiting to gather more facts.

Also note that different crises trigger different legal obligations, such as:

State notification laws and SEC disclosure requirements for cybersecurity incidents

CPSC or FDA reporting for product safety issues

Restatement requirements for financial irregularities

Whistleblower complaints, insider trading investigations and issues related to stock prices in particular require careful coordination between communication and legal teams.

Each scenario requires tailored legal strategies alongside communications planning, she emphasized.

Finally, an important reminder to directors:

 is a board fiduciary duty, requiring enterprise-wide attention.

Are boards receiving regular reports from management about the risks departments are seeing and actions they’re taking to mitigate these issues?

Do board members know enough about the issues to ask the right questions — and are discussions being captured in board minutes for future reference and guidance?

Are committees receiving regular reports as well in their specialized areas like cybersecurity and audit?

Do committee charters clearly define who’s responsible for overseeing what, to avoid overlap and gaps?

The overarching takeaway is this: Knowing what to expect — and how to respond — when the unexpected happens can keep a board in good standing with investors, customers, regulators and more, even in a year when crisis feels more like business as usual.

Curious about how U.S. boards are navigating today’s business landscape? Delve deeper into the latest 

Want regular access to original research in the field of GRC? Bookmark our 

 for the latest surveys, podcasts and reports.

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The Latest in Executive Compensation Trends: Insights from the NextGen Board Leaders East Coast Summit

10 signs that you’re a community college board secretary

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