Directors' College 2023
About
OVERVIEW
Directors’ College, now in its twenty-eighth year, is the nation’s premier executive education program for directors and senior executives of publicly traded firms. The program addresses a broad range of problems that confront modern boards, including the board’s role in setting business strategy, CEO and board succession, crisis management, techniques for controlling legal liability, challenges posed by activist investors, boardroom dynamics, international trade issues, the global economy, and cybersecurity threats.
Directors’ College awards recertification credits to directors working toward maintaining their NACD Directorship Certification®.
PROGRAM DIRECTORS
W.A. Franke Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus, Stanford Law School; Senior Faculty, Rock Center for Corporate Governance; Director, KKR; Co-Director, Stanford Directors’ College
Joseph A. Grundfest is a nationally prominent expert on capital markets, corporate governance, and securities litigation. His scholarship has been published in the Harvard, Yale, and Stanford law reviews, and he has been recognized as one of the most influential attorneys in the United States. Professor Grundfest founded the award-winning Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which provides detailed, online information about the prosecution, defense, and settlement of federal class action securities fraud litigation. Professor Grundfest previously served as a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors as counsel and senior economist for legal and regulatory matters.
Co-Executive Director, Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University; Co-Director, Stanford Directors’ College
Amanda is a corporate governance expert with unique insight into practical, emerging challenges facing corporate boards and the most critical issues on which institutional investors are focused. Since 2013, Amanda has been a leader of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, and she was promoted to Co-Executive Director in 2023.
Since 2015, Amanda has served as Co-Director and the lead operator for Stanford University’s Directors’ College, the nation’s oldest and most prominent education program for board members of publicly traded companies. Amanda oversees content planning, marketing strategy, price setting, budgeting, and selection of more than 80 outside speakers for this revenue-generating board governance program that attracts more than 250 registered attendees per year. In addition to Directors’ College, Amanda plans the content for other key Rock Center programs, including the Stanford Institutional Investors’ Forum, a semi-annual convening of corporate governance thought leaders from public pension funds, large asset managers, and Fortune 100 companies.
Amanda has published articles on board composition and has co-authored a law school textbook, Leadership for Lawyers. As a recognized expert on board refreshment, gender equity issues, and corporate governance, Amanda is frequently asked to speak on these topics to audiences of board members, business leaders, and academics. She has also served on the boards of directors of the Thirty Percent Coalition and the Silicon Valley Directors’ Exchange, and she is currently a member of the California Partners Project’s Women on Boards Advisory Council.
From 2008 to 2013, Amanda was the Executive Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University. She began her legal career practicing white-collar criminal defense and internal investigations as an attorney at Covington & Burling from 2002 to 2005, and at Orrick from 2005 to 2008. In addition to defending individuals in SEC enforcement actions and criminal investigations, Amanda represented audit committees conducting internal investigations and reviewing compliance programs in matters related to securities fraud, antitrust, and anti-corruption.
Amanda has a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Order of the Coif, and an A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, from Princeton University. She lives in Menlo Park, California, with her husband and two sons.
ABOUT THE ROCK CENTER
The Rock Center for Corporate Governance was founded at Stanford University in 2006 with a generous donation from Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock, with the belief that by examining what constitutes good corporate governance and how to measure it in new and more rigorous ways, we could shape the future of corporate governance. For more information, please visit the Rock Center website.
OUR AFFILIATES
The Rock Center Affiliates contribute through sponsorship and program input on an annual basis and support sustained scholarship, policy, relevant research and teaching, and program development that bridges the gap between academia and the rest of the world. You can find more information about the Affiliate Program here.
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