Episode 057 | May 22, 2023 | 9:15
Guest: —
Published: May 22, 2023
Duration: 9:15
Description
In this episode of the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast, Nazneen Rahman, Geneticist, a non-executive board member and advisor to many in the healthcare industry, discusses the workings of a board of directors at AstraZeneca with CEO of Green Innovation Group, Frederik Van Deurs.
They cover the responsibilities of a board member, the importance of asking questions, and the focus on sustainability within the board. This conversation provides valuable insights for anyone interested in the inner work
Full transcript
About this transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies, typos, or mistranslations. Episodes recorded before 2024 were transcribed by an on-site model and may have a higher error rate. The content reflects the original conversation to the best of our ability. For the authoritative version, please listen to the audio episode.
Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast. This is the show where we share tools, tactics and tips for decarbonizing healthcare for professionals that are working in the healthcare industry. My name is Frederik van Deris. I’m the CEO of Green Innovation Group. We are a management consultancy that is dedicated to the decarbonization of healthcare. And today I have with me Nesneen again. Welcome back to the show Nesneen.
How are you doing? It’s great to be back again. We talked in our last conversation a little bit or sort of in the pre-interview about the work that you’re doing in the board of AstraZeneca and as a non-executive and advisor to many folks in the industry. And I just thought that it would be really great to have your insights of what does the work inside the boardroom actually look like because there is a lot of mythology around board work and the way it’s carried out in practice. And I think it would be great to just have sort of your view and what does it look like? Is it a Tuesday afternoon and what kind of work is actually carried out at the board level? Yes, happy to do that and to be fair, before I became a member of the board, it was the opaque to me as well and one of the things that I used to say is that I’m a non-executive and it’s the only job where it’s described that I’ve ever had where it’s titled what I do do.
What would I do do? So we’re non-executives and so I’m on board of AstraZeneca and AstraZeneca is a public company so that’s different boards. You can have boards of lots of different organizations. One of the interesting things I think about a public company is that the responsibilities of the board, the actress boards are really clearly outlined and they have to be disclosed and there’s sort of strict aspects around the things that we have to do around governance and ultimately the board is responsible to the shareholders and we are sort of responsible for the due diligence on that government but we don’t do the execution so that’s obviously run by the Highlander. I suppose in some ways it’s, you can think about it a little bit like in many government systems you will have two houses that are providing different types of roles there, the executive house and then another sort of governing board that will be providing a constructive sounding board, a challenging constructive challenge board so that we want to be aware and save the things and raise the issues and talk about strategy in a way that’s really helpful and getting a window in to the executive and to be able to deal and make sure that’s doing things rather than getting it on the front page of a page or something like that. So there shouldn’t be any surprises really, if you see something on the front page about a paper and that’s the first time you’ve heard about it then probably something’s not working quite right in there. But it is a very constructive place that’s certainly on our board but it is a place where we want to be challenged and we want to be asking questions.
And can you walk us through sort of the physical setup? How many people in the room? How much time does it take? How much time do people spend in preparation? And is it a democratic process or is the chair of the board is the one that’s talking and driving the conversation? How does it sort of play out? So I think that many boards, all boards have their own culture, all organizations have their own cultures so there’s lots of different ways in which you can do that.
And our next board is 12 people, the chair and the CNC effort part of that board. And the other 10 are people like ourselves, people who are not working for the company that says to have. And we bring different kind of disciplines and some of them you have to have people who reward it functions there. Not those like myself, I’m not working for the background. I came on board because of my my science background and I’ve been there in science for five years. So that’s a different, obviously we’re supposed to have that for the not doing science, I think, but I’m not all farmer companies would have a science in the way that we, AstraZeneca. But I think in this space, science is at the heart of what AstraZeneca does and so how that’s strategic overview.
So we have set board meetings where some of them they used to will be in person. Now, some of them are virtual, in person only, and we have an international board we have from Hong Kong to California and Europe. So being able to work together. So we have set things next, next week is the one general meeting. So there’s a whole thing of things that happens every time. But I think the other thing the boards do have to respond very quickly to all sorts of things during pandemic, for example, there are lots of quick decisions there and there’s a lot of papers that one has in the box that we prepare ahead of that time. And and I say are there we have two roles.
The board is to provide due diligence in the things that we get signed off. And then, as I say, by this strategic engagement and so that as that strategy moves forward, but it given that that sort of window. And we’ve had some evolution. So the Sustainability Committee and AstraZeneca bring that eye chair forward over the last 18 months. And so it is it can be dynamic and sustainability has always been really important to pass 1000 a year, or it’s to care and so it’s been a strong and wonderful. So some some something like the integration with the Sustainable Market Initiative. Is that something that is decided by the board?
Is that pitched by Pascal to the border? Is it pitched by the board to Pascal? How does that work? No, I mean, I think there’s something like certainly we were aware of these different things and there’s lots of things and and we hear about different types of strategies. But I think it has to be this freedom to the executive. There are certain things that are in the articles in the above a certain above a sacred the society committee above a certain threshold of a value. It would come to the science committee to review and then go through to the board to have a formal write up about that levels.
But overall, we’re certainly open to be discussing lots of things that anything that we want to be we would be happy to talk about anything that the executive would like us to talk about. And certainly both the science committee and sustainability committee often that’s that’s what and if those are hard things or challenging things or just thinking, as I say, we want to be a reconstructive and sounding board and constructively challenging. And we want to ask all questions. I think as a board member, that was my job to ask useful, useful questions. That’s what I would say would be my main questions that are relevant and they’re going to help to drive forward. That’s that’s that’s what I’m personally says it’s also just really, really informative. Everything comes out of your mouth.
So I really appreciate that. I know you have a super busy schedule. So thank you so much for taking the time for running this explanation of what a boardroom looks like to our audience. I really enjoyed that. And I have a thousand questions that I would like to ask you. But maybe I can find time some other some other day to ask those those questions to you in due time. So Nesni, thank you so much for being on the show and for contributing with your insights and for doing the work that you’re doing.
I think it’s really, really amazing that you put in yourself and that you have this sort of career trajectory where you’re navigating with intention for change. I think that’s really awesome and something that we can also take inspiration from. Thanks very much for having me. Cool. Cheers.