I talked with Dave Stackrow, long-tenured Chair of the Board of the Capital District Transportation Authority (Albany, New York), a couple of days ago about providing transit board members with the information they need to build really solid partnerships with their CEOs. We agreed that the indispensable foundation for board-CEO partnership building is a really close board chair-CEO working relationship. While we were chatting, I recalled that Dave and Carm Basile, CDTA’s Chief Executive Officer, had recorded a really great podcast for this blog describing their partnership in September 2014. As I said in my article accompanying that podcast, Dave and Carm “make up one of the highest-impact, most solid board chair-CEO leadership teams I’ve observed over my 25 years of work with nonprofit and public boards. Their leadership success has a lot to do with their mutual respect, creative and flexible division of labor, and frequent communication.”
Now, more than two years later, Dave and Carm continue to work together as a strong “governing team.” And Dave, who was named APTA Board Member of the Year in 2009, now serves on the APTA Board of Directors and chairs the Transit Board Members Committee.
Listening to Dave and Carm’s podcast again this morning convinced me that I should bring it to the attention of our readers again, so here it is. I hope you’ll comment and share your experience in board chair-CEO relationship building.
