Less than one month into 2025, the world is facing major change. In the United States, a new administration has taken office. The week of the inauguration, Peter Vanham, Executive Editor, Fortune, pointed out, the World Economic Forum had its annual meeting in Davos. Nearly concurrently, DeepSeek, 

a small Chinese competitor to U.S.-based AI companies

. Fortune gathered an intimate group of executives to look at the year ahead as it relates to board members, with an eye toward understanding major risks and opportunities. The conversation was moderated by Vanham, and featured Dottie Schindlinger, Executive Director, Diligent Institute, and Mirek Dušek, Managing Director, World Economic Forum (WEF).

Schindlinger set the scene by reviewing early findings from the annual survey conducted with 

 Diligent Institute, and FTI Consulting. “This year’s findings were quite interesting,” she began, noting that there were several departures from the previous years’ findings. “Three-quarters of directors are pursuing growth opportunities,” she said, a change from the recent focus on cost cutting. Additionally, she told us that 41% of directors are concerned about corporate strategy and ensuring strategy is designed to achieve business goals. She also highlighted that CEO succession planning was a theme in the survey. “We’re seeing an uptick in the number of CEOs that are leaving public companies,” she explained. This, she continued, was one of the most challenging and pressing items for boards, according to the survey.

The final two points that Schindlinger underscored from the survey became themes of the conversation ahead: growing geopolitical concerns and the rise of gen AI and other emerging technologies. Dušek, too, highlighted WEF research that pointed toward geopolitical risks as a key issue for companies in 2025. He described that, each year, the WEF surveys 900 experts and 11,000 business executives around the world to understand the greatest risks facing the world today, in two years, and in the long term. “On the most immediate horizon, 2025, geopolitics and geoeconomics now dominate [risks],” he said, adding that misinformation is the top two-year risk from the survey and climate, environment, and nature-related risks dominate the board members long-term concerns. “I think it’s undeniable that there is a clear trend [of] companies paying more attention to geopolitical risks,” he stated. He noted that this trend is reflected in an increased interest in dialogues on regional and geopolitical issues at the WEF’s meetings.

In addition to geopolitics, technology continues to be a hot topic, both from risk and opportunity perspectives. “I think we’re evenly split on whether we lean risk or potential when it comes to AI. The truth is, we need to think about both,” Schindlinger offered. Dušek agreed, noting that the WEF annual meeting’s theme was Collaboration for the Intelligent Age. “We think [the intelligent age] is actually describing the extraordinary moment that we have with the rapid technological advancement,” he said. He is not only referring to gen AI. “With the concept of the intelligent age, we’re trying to say that… it is a whole host of technologies—clean tech, health tech, space tech, advanced energy, quantum [computing] —that are interacting and transforming industry and society,” he clarified.

Following the on-the-record conversation between Vanham, Dušek, and Schindlinger, attendees broke into small groups for off-the-record discussion. Schindlinger reported back thoughts from her small group. “The big, broad themes that I heard were about strategy. How do you think about strategy in this time of uncertainty and complexity?” she said. Some tips her group discussed to manage uncertainty is scenario planning and fostering agility, so that companies can react to change in real time. Dušek, who was able to join both small groups, said this: “I get a sense that people are trying to have more tools to be better prepared for what is a fast-moving situation.” He underscored the concept of resilience to prepare for the years ahead.

Summarizing the conversation, Schindlinger offered final words of wisdom. “What we know is that we’re going to live through a lot of change in the coming year,” she told us. Because of that, she asked the group to consider, “how do we have [resilience] a part of our ethos moving forward?”

Diligent & Fortune Director Roundtable Series: Eye on 2025

 Jaime Durkowski, serving as Executive Administrative Assistant for Marquardt School District 15 in Glendale Heights, Illinois, has always been a balancing act. Durkowski has to support board members in their work while also upholding a high level of public transparency. Previously, all this work was done on paper — taking significant time and energy.

“Everything was done on paper,” Durkowski said. “They were delivering packets to board members’ houses — I can’t imagine doing that.”

, District 15 has been able to better pursue its mission of providing the best services and education to children with:

 that allows for simplified prep and easy agenda access for board members and community members alike

Easy-to-use website-building tools that quickly help create and maintain a public transparency website

A platform for taking minutes and publishing them easily with no need for paper-based work

 helps Durkowksi equip her board more efficiently with the information they need to make better decisions for the school district.

“Through Diligent I have found that my workload is easier. It provides us with a platform to easily get information out to our community and help support their understanding of our district,” Durkowski said.

Marquardt School District 15 boosts efficiency and transparency with Diligent Community

 Shiona Nash is the Executive Assistant to the Superintendent and Board of Education for Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8, which serves over 9,000 students.

Creating board packets was a major source of stress and frustration for Nash. The manual process involved creating, printing and collating hundreds of pages of materials. Often, Nash would have to hand-deliver packets to each board member before the meeting and make last-minute edits that usually required full packet reprints.

“I always told my coworkers that if there were one reason I would quit it would probably be because of the board packets,” Nash said.

With Diligent, Nash has removed the frustrations from packet preparation, empowering her to:

Streamline packet prep from two weeks into an efficient three-day process

Publish meeting minutes instantly to the website, taking away a time-consuming web update process that used to take hours

“Through Diligent, we’ve been able to increase our transparency with our community,” Nash said. “Our mission is to develop a generation of world-class learners, and Diligent helps us to achieve that mission — helping our board members to do their jobs to their fullest ability.”

Learn more about 

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 streamlines meeting packet prep with Diligent Community

In this episode of Inside Today’s Boardrooms, host Dottie Schindlinger is joined by John Rodi, Co-Leader at the KPMG Board Leadership Center, to discuss data governance and risk. John highlights why data-related risk has become a pressing concern for companies and boards, delves into the most significant data-related risks today, and explains how companies are managing these risks through effective data governance frameworks. The conversation also touches on the implications of Generative AI (GenAI) on data governance and cybersecurity risk profiles.

Emergence of data-related risk as a hot-button issue

Critical data-related risks faced by companies

Key elements of data governance frameworks

Risks posed by generative AI and how companies are managing them

Impact of generative AI on cybersecurity risk profiles

Keys to effective data governance and what 'good' looks like

Diligent

Videos

Diligent & Fortune Director Roundtable Series: Eye on 2025

Marquardt School District 15 boosts efficiency and transparency with Diligent Community

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 streamlines meeting packet prep with Diligent Community

A board lens on data governance and risk

Solutions

Resources

Company

Your Data Matters

Diligent

Videos

Diligent & Fortune Director Roundtable Series: Eye on 2025

Marquardt School District 15 boosts efficiency and transparency with Diligent Community

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 streamlines meeting packet prep with Diligent Community

A board lens on data governance and risk

SolutionsSolutions

ResourcesResources

CompanyCompany

Your Data Matters

Solutions

Resources

Company