James D. White, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Mr. White is the former board chair, president and chief executive officer of Jamba Inc. and previously held senior executive roles at Safeway, Gillette and Ralston Purina. He is the co-founder of Culture Design Lab focused on developing and guiding CEOs, boards, and executive leaders on designing high-performance organizations with purpose. Mr. White is an experienced board chair with 20 years of boardroom experience having served on over 20 pre-IPO, public and private boards. He is currently the chair of The Honest Company board and a member of the Bay Club, CAVA, Greenlight, Schnuck Markets and Simply Good Foods Company boards.  His prior board service includes Adtalem Global Education; Affirm, where he was lead independent director; Hillshire; Medallia and Panera Bread. Mr. White is also co-founder and board chair of the Directors Academy.

Keith Meyer, PRESIDENT

Mr. Meyer is the co-founder and president of the Directors Academy, and also the global head of the CEO & Board Practice at Major, Lindsey & Africa. Mr. Meyer was founder and managing partner of Park Avenue Advisors and previously was vice chairman and managing partner of the Global Board Consulting Practice, and co-leader of the North America CEO & Board Practice, at Heidrick & Struggles. In addition, Mr. Meyer held a variety of operations, corporate development, and finance leadership roles with Exxon and PepsiCo. He was also a member of McKinsey’s global Energy Practice. He has previously been named to the list of 100 most influential people in corporate governance. Mr. Meyer is a Directors Academy board member.

Christine Heckart

Ms. Heckart is the founder and chief executive officer of Xapa, a gamified app designed to develop leaders at all levels of an organization. She previously served as chief executive officer of Scalyr, a venture-backed data analytics platform acquired by SentinelOne. Previously she held senior leadership roles at Cisco, Brocade, ServiceSource, NetApp, Microsoft, Juniper Networks and TeleChoice. She currently serves on the board at Contentful and SiTime and previously was a board member at 6sense and Lam Research.  Ms. Heckart is Directors Academy board member.

Heather Hiles

Heather Hiles is an entrepreneur, investor, and corporate board member. As the founder of the Pathbrite portfolio platform, Hiles had the distinction of raising the largest venture capital fund, and had the largest exit, for any Black woman.  In 2020, Hiles co-founded a seed-stage venture capital fund and previously invested in innovation at the Gates Foundation. Heather built the first statewide online community college, preparing and placing Californians in tech-related jobs. Today, Heather is investing in the healthcare education space. Hiles has served on dozens of boards and currently chairs one private company board while serving on the Audit and Nomination/Governance committees of a public company board, Udemy.

Susan Levine

Ms. Levine is a partner and member of the North American Private Equity team at Bain Capital Private Equity. As head of talent, Ms. Levine leads the human capital agenda across Bain’s North America portfolio which includes ensuring its companies have strong boards and senior leadership teams aligned with each organization’s strategic objectives.  Prior to joining Bain Capital, Ms. Levine served as Bain & Company’s director of North America marketing and client development and previously worked at Barents Group, advising clients M&A activities across emerging markets. She currently serves on the board of TI Fluid Systems and previously on the board of Diversey. Ms. Levine is also a Directors Academy board member.