Gladwin International & Company
Website:
gladwininternational.com
Company:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/gic-global
Seniority: Director
Industries: Business Consulting and Services
Job details:
Practice Leader — Enabling Women Independent Director Leadership
Organisation: India ID Exchange, a Gladwin International platform
Practice: Board Advisory — Enabling Women in ID Leadership (Incumbent not necessarily be a Women Director - We are okay to evaluate every eligible candidate)
Location: Bengaluru / Hybrid, with advisory delivery across India
Position: Senior portfolio-practice leadership appointment
Candidate profile: This mandate is for a highly experienced Board leader
Expected commitment: Approximately 8–12 days each month, with flexibility for candidate sessions, Board panels and scheduled programmes
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer / Managing Partner, Gladwin International
Works with: India ID Exchange / Gladwin International's Board Practice, research and assessment teams, membership leadership, senior external Chairs and specialist governance practitioners
The opportunity
India ID Exchange is building a dedicated advisory practice for accomplished women leaders who want to enter independent directorship, strengthen an existing Board contribution or develop a purposeful portfolio of Board roles.
The practice will address a recurring market failure. India has a substantial population of Board-capable women with deep operating, financial, legal, technology, risk, human-capital, consumer, healthcare, public-policy and entrepreneurial experience.
Many are nevertheless presented to nomination committees through generic executive résumés, narrow functional labels or compliance-led diversity lists. Their real governance judgement is often buried beneath titles and responsibilities.
The Practice Leader will help senior women convert serious executive experience into credible, evidence-led Board candidacy. The purpose is not to make candidates sound more senior than they are. It is to identify where their record can withstand nomination-committee scrutiny, where genuine gaps remain, which Board problems they are equipped to govern, and what they should decline.
This is not a motivational-speaking, networking or personal-brand ambassador role. It requires a leader who has served on consequential Boards, understands the difference between operating and governing, and can give candid advice when a candidate is not yet ready or when a proposed seat carries disproportionate risk.
Core mandate
1. Build the "Enabling Women in ID" Leadership proposition
Define a rigorous advisory pathway for women at distinct Board-career stages: exploring a first seat, holding a Board role alongside an executive career, building a portfolio, and preparing to lead a committee or Board.
Set entry criteria, diagnostic standards, engagement formats, written outputs, mentor matching and completion expectations. Ensure that every programme has a clear candidate problem and a verifiable outcome rather than functioning as a collection of conversations.
Design the practice to accommodate different career realities without lowering the evidence standard: active executives, entrepreneurs, professionals returning after a career interval, former civil servants, academics, partners in professional firms, portfolio leaders and women whose most Board-relevant work occurred below the CEO title.
2. Diagnose actual Board readiness
Conduct or oversee a structured review of each participant’s executive record, legal and governance eligibility, independence, directorship history, committee exposure, decision evidence, conflicts, reputation, availability and risk capacity.
Distinguish eligibility from appointability. IICA Databank inclusion or proficiency status may establish a statutory condition for certain appointments; it does not establish Board judgement, sector relevance, independence of mind or the ability to handle fiduciary exposure.
Provide a written readiness view that states:
- The Board and committee problems the candidate can credibly govern today.
- The evidence supporting that judgement.
- The gaps that can be closed through preparation or experience.
- The gaps that cannot responsibly be disguised through positioning.
- The kinds of Board invitations the candidate should not pursue.
- Any independence, capacity, conflict or consent concern requiring resolution.
3. Surface Board-grade evidence
Help candidates move beyond responsibility statements and identify episodes in which they exercised judgement under uncertainty, challenged a powerful stakeholder, protected an institution, allocated capital, dealt with failure, governed risk, led succession, resolved a conflict or changed course when evidence deteriorated.
Test each episode for the facts a nomination committee will probe: what was known, what remained uncertain, who disagreed, what the candidate personally decided or influenced, what evidence was requested, what downside was accepted, what was recorded and what happened later.
Prevent coaching from turning into scripting. Candidate narratives must remain truthful, attributable and capable of surviving informal references from people who were present.
4. Build a specific Board proposition
Convert broad leadership histories into clear governance propositions tied to company situations, ownership structures, sectors and committee needs. A candidate should be able to state the Board problem she is equipped to solve without reducing herself to a single job title or a diversity label.
Develop positioning across, where relevant:
- Audit, risk, technology, cybersecurity and AI oversight.
- NRC, leadership succession, culture and executive remuneration.
- Consumer, clinical, product-safety or conduct governance.
- Capital allocation, transformation, restructuring and IPO readiness.
- Sustainability, climate, community and supply-chain stewardship.
- Regulated-sector, promoter, PE-backed and cross-border governance.
Challenge candidates who claim expertise too broadly. The practice should make a candidate more precise, not merely more visible.
5. Address the distinctive barriers experienced by women candidates
Create a confidential environment in which accomplished women can discuss risks often handled poorly by generic Board programmes: being considered only for a mandatory woman-director vacancy, being presented as a culture or HR candidate despite wider enterprise experience, sponsor expectations, founder dynamics, voice and interruption in the Boardroom, disproportionate scrutiny, informal network exclusion and the pressure to accept the first invitation offered.
Help candidates respond without asking them to imitate a stereotypical male Board style. The objective is not conformity; it is authority grounded in evidence, preparation, judgement and an understanding of Board process.
Examine career breaks, flexible work, family-business relationships and non-linear careers factually. Neither minimise them nor allow nomination committees to substitute assumptions for evidence.
6. Prepare candidates for nomination committees
Lead demanding mock NRC and Chair interviews based on real Board situations. Test whether candidates can:
- Interpret the company’s strategic and governance agenda.
- Ask what the Board needs rather than lead with personal aspiration.
- Explain a difficult decision with clarity and proportion.
- Distinguish constructive challenge from executive intervention.
- Discuss independence, conflicts, time and liability without evasion.
- Respond to questions about gender and diversity without being confined by them.
- Judge whether the Board itself is suitable for acceptance.
Provide direct written feedback with prioritised corrections. Avoid generic confidence coaching and rehearsed answers that collapse under follow-up questioning.
7. Teach reverse diligence and consent judgement
Guide candidates through evaluation of company financials, ownership, promoter conduct, regulatory history, litigation, auditor changes, Board churn, related parties, committee quality, information access, D&O insurance, indemnity, workload and the circumstances creating the vacancy.
Develop the confidence to decline an invitation where the information, culture, time requirement or liability is unacceptable. The practice must never equate a completed programme with accepting a seat.
8. Support first-term Board effectiveness
Advise newly appointed women directors through induction, first Board packs, committee preparation, management relationships, private sessions, minutes, dissent, conflicts, site visits and the first annual evaluation.
Help the director establish credibility without becoming either silent or prematurely performative. The first objective is to understand the business and its control environment deeply enough to identify which questions matter.
Offer confidential guidance when a director encounters a difficult Chair, dominant promoter, weak control function, unresolved whistle-blower matter, information restriction or request to support a decision before sufficient evidence is available.
9. Develop women committee Chairs and Board Chairs
Create a progression pathway for women already serving on Boards who are ready to lead Audit, Risk, NRC, ESG, Stakeholder or specialist committees and, eventually, the Board itself.
Cover agenda construction, pre-meeting work, control-function access, handling disagreement, management commitments, evaluation, succession, sensitive investigations and the quality of minutes. Chair development must focus on decisions and institutional behaviour, not ceremonial presence.
10. Build a high-integrity mentor and practitioner network
Identify experienced women and men who have served as Chairs, committee leaders, regulators, company secretaries, general counsel, CFOs, investors and control-function executives. Define where specialist participation adds value and how candidate confidentiality will be protected.
Prevent mentor relationships from becoming commercial introductions, informal lobbying or a parallel placement market. Advice and assessment must remain separate from any company’s appointment decision.
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