Every year, thousands of accomplished executives—retired CEOs, outgoing CFOs, veteran operators with decades of hard-won experience—set their sights on the same target: a seat on a public company board. They polish their LinkedIn profiles, work their networks, hire advisors…and wait. And wait. And wait.
Most wait a long time. There are roughly 30,000 public company board seats in the United States. Turnover averages about five years. Do the math: that’s 6,000 openings a year, contested by a very large and very qualified pool of candidates.
Tate Pursell has watched this dynamic for years and thinks most of those executives are missing the better opportunity entirely.
Pursell is a longtime manufacturing CEO and private equity veteran who has served on 13 boards over the course of his career—none of them public companies. That’s not a gap in his resume, it’s the point. His new book, Roadmap to Your Next Board Seat, makes the case that while the executive world fixates on a thin slice of public company seats, hundreds of thousands of private company board positions sit largely overlooked by the very people best qualified to fill them. Family-owned companies, private equity-backed portfolio companies, founder-led businesses—all of them need experienced, independent voices in the boardroom, and relatively few of the CEOs who could fill that role actively pursue those roles.
“If you think about how many director seats there are in the United States, there are far more in private companies than in public companies,” Pursell says. And while public company boards, especially Fortune 500 seats, get all the attention they also come with significant legal exposure and stiff competition. Private company boards, on the other hand, offer hundreds of thousands of seats with far less competition and, increasingly, real financial upside.
Pursell served on one family company board for 15 years. Over that time the company doubled revenues, more than doubled profits—and more than doubled its stock price. The restricted shares he received along the way became significant. “The annual compensation is modest—average around $30,000—but in many cases there’s also equity granted,” says Pursell.
Private equity boards in particular deserve a closer look, he says. The entire PE model is built around value creation and exit—which means the equity component can be genuinely meaningful if the company performs. And the demand for qualified independent directors with real industry knowledge is growing as private equity portfolio company governance becomes more professionalized. It’s an expanding market, and most executives haven’t thought seriously about tapping it.
Unfortunately, he says, many executives think of board service as something for after the operating chapter closes—a second act, a way to stay engaged after the main career winds down. That’s the wrong mindset and a wasted opportunity, he says. Pattern recognition across companies is a real competitive edge for operators. You start seeing things earlier because you’ve watched the same dynamic play out somewhere else first. The exposure also builds the skills and the reputation that make the next board seat easier to land. “When I was CEO, most of the time I was serving on one external board,” he says. “It gives you an additional perspective that you can bring back to your own company.”
Besides, he says, “it’s an opportunity to take years of accumulated experience and use it for the benefit of a company and the other members of the board. It’s an opportunity to give back.”
Sold? Pursell offers tips on getting your board quest off to a solid start:
LinkedIn matters far more than you think. Being selected for a board is less about whom you know than about who knows you. That reframe matters. The goal isn’t to ask for something—it’s to be findable and legible to the people who are looking. “You want to be in a situation where you can be found, and the primary way of being found these days is through LinkedIn,” he says. So make sure that your LinkedIn profile expresses your unique value proposition and that you are refreshing your LinkedIn profile at least once a month so the LinkedIn algorithm keeps pushing you to the top in terms of being able to be found.”
Know your unique value proposition—and be specific about who needs it. Generic doesn’t work. The right approach: Identify precisely what you bring, then scan the landscape for companies where that genuinely matters. Family-owned businesses, PE portfolio companies and trade associations all have distinct needs and distinct governance cultures. Research specific companies, find out who’s on their boards, and pursue targeted conversations through your network and LinkedIn. “If you’re a jack of all trades, you’re master of none,” Pursell says. “And nobody wants a master of none.”
Stop presenting yourself as an operator. The biggest mistake CEOs make when pursuing board seats is pitching themselves the way they’d pitch for an executive role. Nobody wants a director riding in on a white horse. They want someone who can ask the right question at the right moment and help management think through hard problems without taking over. That’s a different posture—and CEOs have to consciously make the shift, both in how they present themselves and in how they actually behave once they’re in the room. “If you’re presenting your skills as a CEO, you talk about the dragons you slayed and the EBITDA you put on the bottom line,” Pursell says. “But if you’re presenting yourself as a potential value to a board, what you want to do is say how you can influence others, guide the management team, coach people.” Remember: Nose in, fingers out.
On hot skills: industry expertise travels furthest. Technical capabilities—AI, cybersecurity, whatever the current moment demands—matter, but boards don’t need someone who can do the work. They need someone who understands how it should be used, what the strategic guardrails should look like, and when management is getting distracted by a shiny object. “That’s the role of the board member.”
On headhunters: don’t count on them for private companies. Recruiters matter enormously for public board placements and serve as genuine gatekeepers there. In the private company world, not so much. Many recruiting firms aren’t interested in private board searches because the fees don’t justify the effort. Your network and your LinkedIn presence matter more in the private market than any recruiter relationship. Direct outreach and concerted networking—actually identifying target companies, finding who’s on their boards and making contact—is the path that works.
Start now, start somewhere. The typical board journey, Pursell says, starts with nonprofits, then private companies and then, potentially, with public company boards. “Being on boards helps you be better at being on boards,” he says. If you’re starting from scratch, a nonprofit, a hospital board, a trade association or a government advisory committee all count. They build governance instincts, board-room fluency and—importantly—a track record that makes the next step easier to justify to a nominating committee. “You just gotta jump in and try it.”
