Directors' College 101: Board Fundamentals for New Directors
Kate Purmal
COO, Illumyn
Kate Purmal is the COO of illumyn, a social impact venture that offers programs to increase visibility, fast-track board service opportunities, and amplify excellence and effectiveness of seated board members for those historically underrepresented in the boardroom.
Kate is also an independent board director and strategic advisor who coaches CEOs and Executives to secure independent board seats, elevate their executive presence, build high-performing teams, and achieve business and operational excellence.
As an Operator she has held numerous CEO, COO, and CFO roles for private companies, and was SVP for SanDisk (Acquired by Western Digital NASDAQ: WDC). She is independent corporate board director and recently served on the boards of Versaic (Acquired by Benevity Inc.) and ABD Insurance and Financial Services (Merged with Newfront Insurance).
Kate has been instrumental in five successful M&A exits: as a co-founder Liquid Machines (acquired by Check Point Software Technologies in 2010), as a member of the founding management team at Palm, Inc (acquired by US Robotics in 1995), as CEO of U3 Inc. (merged with SanDisk in 2007), and as Independent Board Director of ABD Insurance and Financial Services (Merged with Newfront Insurance) and Versaic Inc. (Acquired by Benevity).
Kate lives in Santa Barbara, California with her husband and two dogs. She is an avid road and mountain biker and hiker, and loves to accompany her professional yacht captain husband James on sailing adventures up and down the west coast from Alaska to Mexico.
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