Governance & Board
When your board has lost its footing.
Renewal has stalled, no one will take the chair, or the board and CEO are pulling against each other.
Boards go through hard seasons of their own. Renewal stalls and the same few carry too much. No one will step into the chair's role — the heavy lifting nobody volunteers for. Or the board and the CEO have drifted into mistrust, and every decision lands heavier than it should.
None of this means the board is broken. It usually means the board has outgrown how it was set up — and no one has had the room, the perspective, or the standing to say so.
Right now this is the pressure defining the sector: boards struggling to renew, and to find chairs willing to do the real work.
Does any of this sound familiar?
- "Why will no one step into the chair?"
- "The same few of us carry the whole board — how long can that last?"
- "The board and the CEO have stopped trusting each other. How did we get here?"
What the work is.
Governance as it's actually lived, not a policy binder.
- Steadying a board through renewal — clarifying roles, easing the load off the few, and helping the board become one a strong chair would want to lead.
- Coaching the chair through the heavy lifting the role genuinely requires, often the loneliest seat in the room.
- Where a board and CEO have drifted, rebuilding the working relationship the whole organization runs on.
Genesa has sat in both seats — the board chair's and the CEO's — so this is counsel from inside the relationship, not above it.
Some of that deeper work — a board assessment, reviewing bylaws and committee structure — is part of the engagement itself, scoped with you from the start. Only where it crosses into specialist legal territory, like restructuring the entity, does she bring in a hand from the collective.
A struggling board is almost never a broken one — it has outgrown how it was built. And the pressure is structural: Statistics Canada tracked the volunteer participation rate falling from 79% to 73%, so boards are increasingly recruited in scarcity, and BoardSource's Leading with Intent found 43% of chief executives say they don't have the board they need. The work is renewal, not rescue.
What you leave with.
- A board clearer on its role and able to renew itself.
- A chair supported in the hardest parts of the job.
- A board–CEO relationship that holds.
- Governance that serves the mission instead of draining it.
The chair's role takes nerve, and it's often the loneliest seat in the room.
Governance that serves the mission, not one that drains it.
"Working with Genesa as our board chair was transformative — she redesigned our board structures and mandates, moving governance from reactive to proactive."
Questions leaders ask first
What if we can't find a chair?
You're not alone — it's one of the sector's most acute pressures. The work is to make the board one a strong chair would want to lead, and to support whoever steps in through the real weight of the role.
Is this board training?
No. This is governance as it's actually lived — renewal, the chair's role, and the board–CEO relationship — not a policy binder or a one-off workshop.
Do you work with the chair, the board, or the CEO?
Whichever the season needs — the board through renewal, the chair through the role, or the board and CEO where trust has thinned. Counsel from someone who has sat in both seats.
What does board renewal involve?
Clarifying roles, easing the load off the few, and helping the board become one that can renew itself and that a strong chair would want to lead.