OUR TEAM

Board of Directors

James D. White, Chairman of the Board

Mr. White is the former chairman, chief executive officer and president of Jamba Inc. and previously held senior executive roles at Safeway, Gillette and Ralston Purina. Mr. White is an experienced board chair with 20 years of boardroom experience having served on over 16 public, pre-IPO, private and startup boards. He currently serves on several public company boards, including Affirm – where he is lead independent director, Honest Company – where he is board chair, and Simply Good Foods. He is Executive Chairman of Air Protein, a startup that makes protein-enriched food from carbon dioxide.

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 and co-leader of the Leadership Practice at Allegis Partners. 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. 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 D100 list of the most influential people in corporate governance.

Niko Canner

Mr. Canner is the founder of Incandescent, a firm focused on turning ideas into businesses. He was co-founder and Managing Partner of the consulting firm Katzenbach Partners. Most recently, Mr. Canner was a member of the Management Committee of Bridgewater Associates. He began his consulting career at McKinsey & Company. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and has initiated and co-leads China 2024, a study of the development of business leaders in China.

Christine Heckart

Ms. Heckart is the CEO and co-founder of Xapa World, a venture-backed biotechnology company, having served as CEO of Scalyr prior to the company’s merger with SentinelOne in February 2021. Previously, she was senior vice president and marketing leader at Cisco and chief marketing officer of Brocade. Prior to joining Brocade, Ms. Heckart served as executive vice president of strategy, marketing, people, and IT at ServiceSource, a provider of cloud applications and services for managing recurring revenue. She was also chief marketing officer at NetApp and Juniper Networks. Ms. Heckart was general manager of Microsoft’s TV, video, and music business and president of TeleChoice. She is currently a member of board of directors at Contentful and SiTime, and previously served on the boards of 6sense and Lam Research.

Heather Hiles

Ms. Hiles has founded six ventures over the past two decades, including Pathbrite, a leading digital portfolio platform that was acquired by Cengage in 2015. Pathbrite is the largest digital portfolio platform in the market and serves more than five million users.  Ms. Hiles most recently founded Imminent Equity, an investment start-up, where she is the chief executive officer and managing partner. She was previously the deputy director, solutions, post-secondary for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has an extensive track record of raising capital and holds the distinction of having raised most venture capital funding for any African American woman founder. After receiving her MBA from Yale University, she worked in the financial services sector in M&A roles. Ms. Hiles has served on over a dozen boards including Liberty & Justice, a clothing company, and the San Francisco Unified School District.

Susan Levine

Ms. Levine is a managing director 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 boards of Diversey and TI Fluid Systems.

Paul Williams

Mr. Williams currently serves on the boards of Air Transport Services Group, Compass Minerals, Public Storage, Romeo Power and a group of American Funds boards (part of Capital Group). He is also the president of the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). Previously, Mr. Williams was the Nominating and Governance Committee chairman for Essendant. He has served as the lead independent director of State Auto Financial Corporation, as well as the Compensation Committee chairman and CEO Search Committee chairman for Bob Evans Restaurants. Previously Mr. Williams served as executive vice president, chief legal officer and secretary of Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 company, and co-leader of the North America Board Practice of Allegis Partners. His career began as a corporate and securities associate with the law firms of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease.

Billie Williamson

Ms. Williamson has over three decades of experience auditing public companies as a partner of EY. In addition, she served as senior vice president, finance and corporate controller of Marriott International and chief financial officer of AMX Corporation. While at EY, Ms. Williamson served as the Americas Inclusiveness Officer, a member of its Americas Executive Board and head of the Center for Strategic Transactions in the southwest region. Ms. Williamson has served on numerous public and private company boards, including Annie’s, Beneficient Company Group LP, CSRA, Cricut, Cushman & Wakefield, Energy Future Holdings, ITT Exelis, Janus Capital Group, Kraton, Pentair, Pharos Capital and XL Catlin.