News

VAB member Loraine Phillips has written for the VAB community a new text with thoughts on how boards and company leadership teams can improve their approaches to foresight thinking in terms of cyber resilience. In this text, she highlights key areas where action needs to be taken: facing the inevitability of risk, overcoming the myth of matters being too technical and defining strategies for preve

VAB member George Bakos shared with us in January 2026 a new article highlighting the critical importance of succession planning for family business structures and how boards can help guide such transitions and make them run more smoothly. In his text, When Succession Becomes Strategy: How Boards Create Value in Family Businesses, George explores topics such as governance challenges relating to su

We would like to introduce you to VAB member, Mohammed Adlani, who joins our community from Saudi Arabia. He is an architect of AI-Native enterprises and national-scale digital economies who as a 22-year track record bridging enterprise strategy and emerging technology across Tier-1 telcos, global consulting and diversified holding groups. The latter projects span across Europe, Africa and the GCC

We’d like to introduce you to VAB member Jennifer Vessels, a Silicon Valley veteran based in Oslo, Norway.  She is CEO of Next Step and has led transformation for Adobe, Google, IKEA, Microsoft and Novartis. Jennifer brings visionary yet practical insights to boards based on her  25+ years’ experience leading transformative growth within Fortune 100 companies and is an award-winning keynote speake

The VAB team is happy to welcome Henry Sichel to our community. He is based in Italy and is co-founder and managing partner of Caffeina, a creative marketing consulting agency he founded together with his partners. At Caffeina, Henry leads the company’s cultural direction and corporate affairs, helping clients and teams challenge the status quo through talent, curiosity and courage. Under his lead

We are pleased to introduce you to Stéphane Rogovsky who joined the VAB community from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He is an experienced leader in the banking and finance sector and more recently has developed a passion for influencer marketing: specifically, building governance frameworks to deliver greater discipline in this space. He recently published a book on this topic that we h

We would like to introduce our member Daniel Lehmann, who joins the VAB community from Zürich, Switzerland. Daniel has over 20 years of business leadership experience. He has led companies across various industries (textiles, retail and distribution, packaging, manufacturing, OEM electronics) and has a passion for supporting businesses, specifically SMEs, scale and grow market share. Daniel is kee

We are pleased to introduce our member Rania Abou Samra, who joins the VAB community from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Rania is a global R&D and innovation leader with deep expertise in nutrition science, technology-enabled innovation and enterprise R&D strategy. She currently serves as Vice President and Head of Innovation and Research & Development at Nestlé Middle East & North Africa, whe

We would like to introduce our member Rafael Molho, who joins the VAB community from Greece. Rafael is an expert in the fields of international sourcing, procurement and trade development. He currently contributes as an advisory expert to UN/CEFACT working groups and participates in UNCTAD working groups and expert discussions in his personal capacity. He is also managing director at TradeCoup, a

VAB member Richard Tusabe was recently appointed as an independent NED (non-executive director) at I&M Bank (Rwanda) Plc. Below he shares some insights on his professional transformation and his path to this new governance role.What started you on your path to your new role – a network referral, a board role facilitator organisation/head-hunter, another route?My appointment to this role was initia

We would like to introduce our member Yaravi Cardoze, who joined the VAB community from Panama. Yaravi currently serves as board and executive advisor at BoD Advisors. She also has held advisor and mentor positions with businesses and organisations like Wisy Platforms, Inc. and the Project Management Institute. Yaravi served as Chief Digital Officer for Canal de Panamá, was VP of Digital & People

We would like to introduce our member Annette Buehler, who joined the VAB community from Zürich, Switzerland. Annette is an expert in organisational transformation, a passionate advocate for bringing a deep, fundamental understanding of AI to boards and their decision-making processes and an award-winning author. She is keen on engaging with her VAB members to shape conversations on how boards def

We would like to introduce our member Sunil Khosla, who joined the VAB community from Mumbai, India. Sunil is an active investor, advisor, entrepreneur, mentor, social impact champion and experienced C-suite leader with over 25 years of global experience. He is the founder of Unicorn Next, a business growth accelerator for start-ups and scale-ups on go-to-market initiatives, growth acceleration, b

We would like to introduce our member Raymond D. Harari, who joined the VAB community from Panama City, Panama. He is an investor, advisor, entrepreneur and venture builder with a passion for innovation and for supporting teams that want to create value and build new, long-term sustainable projects. Ray is founder and managing director of Canalis Capital, a strategic and innovative merchant bank f

We are delighted to welcome Nikos Grammatikos to the VAB community. Based in Athens, Nikos brings to our organisation more than twenty years of senior leadership experience across Southeast Europe in FMCG, retail and B2B consumer services. His career includes transformative commercial and operational roles at Procter & Gamble, A B Vassilopoulos, the Greek branch of Ahold Delhaize, and as Deputy Ge

We would like to introduce our member George Popescu, who joined the VAB community from Geneva, Switzerland. George is very active in the tech space focusing on all aspects of digital transformation and what that means for organisations of all sizes. With 17+ years of experience across business-IT strategy, IT governance, digitalisation, enterprise architecture and analytics, he has advised and co

We would like to introduce our member Liz Gebhard, who joined the VAB community from London, UK. For those of you who don’t yet know her, Liz is a very active member of our community and serves as country co-chair for VAB’s UK chapter. She has also been an active contributor to VAB events speaking at a recent learning session on evolving cultural perspectives in the boardroom. With 20+ years of ex

We would like to introduce our member Kai-Nicholas Kunze, who joins the VAB community from Lausanne, Switzerland. He currently serves as Head of Financial Services Advisory – Banking & Insurance at ELCA Group. Previously, he worked for Accenture DACH in management consulting focused on the Insurance industry. Kai-Nicholas has served on a number of boards including as a board director at Wise.swiss

We would like to introduce our member Rabih Baz Radwan, who joins the VAB community from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Rabih currently holds the function of Chief Advisory Officer at the Centre for Governance in Riyadh, and he has served in a partner and board role for the startup Intervu.ai and also in top leadership roles with Deloitte and in a senior risk management role with EY. His professional journ

We are pleased to welcome George Bakos to the VAB community, joining us from Athens, Greece. George is currently a partner and chief commercial officer (CCO) at Verallis, a firm specialising in uncovering hidden profits through cost reduction and optimisation, with operations in Greece and Romania. His career spans senior executive roles, including CEO positions at Premia Properties, a listed REIC