Welcome to the Boardroom Governance Podcast. I’m your host, Evan Epstein. In this episode, I talk with Alicia Syrett, an experienced corporate director on multiple public, private, advisory and non-profit boards across industries and market capitalizations. She currently serves as the Chair of Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC) and founded the Madam Chair group (www.madam-chair.com), an organization with 200+ female Chairs and Lead Directors of publicly traded companies. She is also the CEO of Pantegrion Capital, an angel investment vehicle focused on seed and early-stage investments that she founded in 2011. In this podcast, we talk about her board experience, the NY tech scene, the Madam Chair initiative that she founded, lessons for public and private company directors, strategy and innovation, ESG, geopolitics and more. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can also now contribute as a Patron on the link patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod and you can subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com
0:00 -- Intro.
1:18 -- Start of interview.
1:53 -- Alicia's "origin story" and her career in finance and search/recruiting industry.
4:52 -- Her role founding investment firms. She was the first employee and CAO at Mount Kellett Capital Management and founded Pantegrion Capital, an investment vehicle focused on seed and early stage investments.
7:02 -- Her journey in the corporate board world. She's now the Chair at Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC).
8:11 -- On the distinctions between private and public boards.
12:24 -- On the NY tech scene.
17:02 -- On the exodus of finance/tech executives from NY post-pandemic.
18:47 -- The origin and mission of the Madam Chair, a collaborative group of 200+ female Chairs and Lead Directors of publicly-traded companies.
29:11 -- Some lessons after joining a public company board.
33:32 -- Her take on the role of the board in strategy and innovation. "It's absolutely the board's role to ask very smart questions." "Innovation should be baked into a risk review process."
37:48 -- Her take on ESG, the anti-ESG backlash and the politicization of corporate governance.
43:00 -- On the geopolitical concerns in the boardroom, particularly on "decoupling" or "de-risking" with China.
45:32 -- Her thoughts on board education, and staying up to date (for example, with feedly app).
47:56 -- The books have greatly influenced her life: the classics from high school (1984, The Bell Jar, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Catcher in the Rye, etc.)
49:37 -- Her mentors, and what she learned from them: "It's more of a mindset for me where I see people doing great things and I think wow, how do I do that."
51:00 -- Quotes she thinks of often or lives her life by: "This too shall pass." "The best is yet to come."
51:42 -- An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves: Mac and cheese.
52:18 -- The living person she most admires: Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Alicia Syrett currently serves as the Chair of Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC) and founded the Madam Chair group, an organization with 200+ female Chairs and Lead Directors of publicly traded companies.
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You can follow Alicia on social media at:
Twitter: @AliciaSyrett
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciasyrett/
Madam Chair: www.madam-chair.com
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You can follow Evan on social media at:
Twitter: @evanepstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/
Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/
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You can join as a Patron of the Boardroom Governance Podcast at:
Patreon: patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod
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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License