Powerful insight, driven by experience
Our team comprises experienced former CEOs, executives and founders from a wide range of sectors, with strong board chair and non-executive director experience.
Great results, backed by our commitment
We’ll support you to achieve a step-change in your board’s effectiveness , governance and performance enabling you to excel for your shareholders, employees and stakeholders.
Some of Our Clients
What Our Clients Say
“We recently engaged with Board Excellence to perform an external review of the performance of our Board. Under the guidance of Ros O’Shea, Board Excellence delivered a comprehensive assessment that was professional, rigorous, and fair. Universally, our Directors had affirming comments about their interviews with Ros. I found that Ros was particularly adept in bringing forward best practices that will help the performance of our Board as we move forward. The approach taken was not cookie cutter in any fashion. Board Excellence tailored our assessment to our Industry and our circumstances. I have no reservations in recommending Board Excellence to others.”
“Bord Na Mona selected Board Excellence to carry out a three year external Board Evaluation, this was following a tender process to select the most appropriate party to do the work. The project was managed and led by Martina Maher. The Board were extremely pleased with the process and the professional approach adopted from beginning to end. That started with Board Excellence understanding the Company, key issues, reviewing various material and speaking with selected people to ensure both the questionnaire and one to one meetings were relevant. Key for us was Board Excellence understanding the brief, were succinct in meetings and presented their findings in a way that was challenging, but easily understood. The Board are satisfied that Board Excellence brought fresh thinking and specifics in terms of practical improvements that could be made. We have no hesitation in recommendation Board Excellence and Martina to others.”
“Paul George and Sue Bonney recently completed a comprehensive Board Effectiveness Review for us. They have a well-established process for gathering evidence, apply sound judgement in interpreting that evidence and provided a clear and concise report with practical recommendations. Paul and Sue communicated professionally and effectively with us throughout the process and were prepared to listen and reflect on feedback and address our comments. We appreciated Paul and Sue’s experience and guidance throughout the process.”
“Board Excellence delivered a robust and objective assessment of the Board. Paul George and Martina Maher clearly understood the context in which the Board was operating as a result of the rapidly growing nature of the business, the level of regulatory scrutiny given the Group’s ambitious plans for further growth and the resulting pressures placed on the Board. The report was clear, to the point with some pertinent and practical recommendations which will help our governance arrangements keep place with our changing environment.”
“Africa50 engaged Board Excellence – a leading international board consulting practice – to conduct an external independent board and committee evaluation as part of our deep commitment to the highest standards of corporate governance. At Africa50, we believe that regularly conducting and acting on such assessment is meant to improve board and committee’s overall effectiveness and performance. We found the process to evaluate Africa50 Board performance to be comprehensive, tailored to our requirements and added significant value. The quality of the team – Kieran and Chaka – were excellent, highly engaging, with deep expertise in the board governance area. The Corporate Secretary team kept engaged in the planning and during all the process. They managed to keep our directors engaged all along in a helpful and pleasant manner. We are delighted to recommend the engagement of Board Excellence in assessing a board and advising on how best to deliver enhanced board effectiveness.”
Morocco
“Kieran led our Board of Directors and Executive Management Team through an education session on Board Best Practices. The session covered key best practices for the executive team partnering with the board of directors, optimizing the value of board committees and evolving expectations of and key trends in publicly listed company boards. With Kieran’s extensive experience as an advisor and a board member, he was able to provide current and practical advice and guidance to the board and executive team. Thanks to his facilitation style, we had genuine healthy engagement and discussion from both board members and executive. We would not hesitate to recommend Kieran.”
Canada
Meet the Board Excellence Team
Highly experienced board and governance experts combining experience as practicing Board Chairs and Non-Executive Directors with a strong track record in board/governance evaluations, training, consultancy, board recruitment and board dispute mediation.
Kieran Moynihan
As the founder of Board Excellence, Kieran has worked extensively with boards across Ireland, UK and internationally in a wide range of sectors and scale of organisations. He has over 20 years’ experience serving on boards as a CEO, executive director, non-executive director and board chair. He is currently the board chair of a number of internationally-focused companies across a number of industry sectors.
Kieran is an internationally-recognised thought leader in the area of board dynamics, effectiveness, performance and corporate governance. He is a regular contributor to leading international board publications and has developed ground-breaking new approaches to optimising the “people equation of the board”, the partnership between executive and non-executive board members and enabling the board to excel as a high-performing team.
Ros O’Shea
Ros is an experienced Non-Executive Director with a portfolio of board positions, including BlackRock’s funds in Ireland, the Bank of Montreal (Europe) plc, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and Pieta House. Previously Ros enjoyed a highly successful executive career, spanning almost 20 years, as a senior executive and trusted board advisor to FTSE100 companies, CRH plc and Smurfit Kappa Group plc, having trained as a Chartered Accountant with PwC.
Ros also lectures on the Diploma in Corporate Governance at the UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School and with the Institute of Banking and is the author of the book, “Leading with Integrity – a Practical Guide to Business Ethics”. She is a regulator contributor to news and print media on related topics and a respected authority on corporate culture and the role of the board, values-based leadership and ESG as an emerging board mandate.
Anne-Marie Taylor
Anne-Marie is a Non-Executive Director on boards including the Public Appointments Service, the UCD Governing Authority and the Irish Hospice Foundation. She is the Programme Director for Balance for Better Business, the government-sponsored, business-led initiative which aims to improve gender balance in Irish business leadership. She is co-founder of the Board Diversity Initiative which produces a directory of senior women suitable for board roles.
Most of her executive career was with Accenture where she held a number of local and global roles. In recent years she has led her own management consulting operation working on business transformation projects with clients across a variety of sectors.
Anne-Marie has a Diploma in Corporate Governance from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. In 2020, she was shortlisted for National Trustee of the Year. She is also a qualified executive coach.
Chaka Nkofo
Chaka is an experienced Non-Executive Director with more than fifteen (15) years corporate experience serving on boards as CEO/Managing Director, Executive Director, Non-Executive Director, and Chairman of Board Committees (Audit, Risk, Nominations and Ethics). Chaka has worked across diverse portfolio’s (construction, real estate, trade and investment, development finance, services, manufacturing, water, petroleum, and energy) in both Executive and Non-Executive Director roles.
Chaka has also been conferred with a Chartered Director CD (SA)® designation by the Institute of Directors South Africa (IoDSA). In this regard, he is a regular Mentor on the Institute of Directors South Africa’s Mentorship Circles Programme for aspiring Chartered Directors. Chaka is a highly experienced specialist consultant in corporate governance, board effectiveness and training of board directors.
Eileen Cole
Eileen is a practicing non-executive director, an experienced executive and management consultant and provides corporate finance, mergers, acquisitions and company re-structuring support to executive and board teams in companies across multiple industry sectors.
She is an External Business advisor to the Department of Economics in University College Cork, Ireland for their MSc Economics of Business Practice programme.
Paul George
Paul is an expert in Corporate Governance, Reporting and Audit. Whilst at the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), he was the Executive Director responsible for the development of the 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code, The Wates Principles of Corporate Governance for Large Private Companies and the 2020 UK Stewardship Code. He has spoken regularly on such matters at UK and international conferences, and to Government working parties and Select Committees.
Paul is an experienced board chair and has been an executive and non-executive director of a number of public, private and not for profit organisations. Paul is a chartered accountant and former KPMG partner and adviser auditor to many public and private companies across a range of industry sectors.
Martina Maher
Martina is an experienced Independent Non-Executive Director and consultant with a portfolio of board and committee positions in the financial services, sustainability, and not-for-profit sectors. Previously, she had a highly successful executive career of over 25 years in leading organisations such as KPMG, Bank of Ireland Group plc, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) and AIB Group plc. Martina is a Chartered Director (Institute of Directors), a Chartered Accountant having trained with Deloitte (London) and holds a Law Degree. Her areas of expertise include governance, strategy, risk management and internal audit.
Pat McGrath
Pat is a Chartered Director and a Chartered Engineer with strong international business development experience. He is the former CEO of PM Group, the Irish-headquartered global engineering and project management company with 3,500 employees operating in over 30 countries delivering complex facilities in the Biopharma, MedTech, Food, Data Centre, Energy and other advanced manufacturing sectors. Pat previously sat on the board of the Irish Management Institute (IMI). He was the first Chair of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) – the statutory regulator of the Irish health system. He was a Governor of Cork Institute of Technology – now Munster Technological University.
Pat is an experienced Board Chair of and Board Advisor to a number of SMEs. Pat currently specialises in strategy and strategic planning and holds a Diploma in ESG.
Sue Bonney
Sue is an experienced Board member, with a track record of senior Executive and Non-Executive and Chair roles in organisations ranging from professional services, to corporate and not-for-profit sectors. Previously as a Vice Chair and Head of ESG at KPMG UK, and now as an independent adviser, Sue has a particular focus on ESG working with the Boards of some of the UK’s largest and most important organisations on their strategic response to the responsible business and ESG agenda, prioritising material issues with maximum impact and fully incorporating the principles of good governance.
A Board member at The Forward Institute, Sue also works with senior executives to help them develop a future focused lens on their business to equip them as highly effective leaders of tomorrow and change agents of today.
Steve Masters
Steve is a highly experienced accountant with excellent governance, regulator relationship management and problem-solving capabilities. He was an audit partner with KPMG UK for over 20 years and brings significant experience of advising Boards and Audit Committees – including FTSE-100 and FTSE-250 groups, large private companies, private equity backed companies and not-for-profit groups. Earlier in his 35-year career, Steve was Group Financial Controller for a FTSE-100 group which helped develop his progressive approach to the partnership between an Executive Team and its Board.
Steve is also an experienced trustee who sits on two charity boards – chairing the Finance Committee for one of them.