Boards Must Be AI Literate Without Jettisoning Leadership Basics

You don’t need to be on the board of a technology company to know and viscerally feel the effects of an artificial intelligence surge. Though I currently serve on the boards of two microcap software-as-a-service companies, I have served on corporate boards in industries including for-profit music education, music instrument manufacturing, and regional banking for more than 25 years. I’ve seen how AI has disrupted nearly every company in every industry.

The two companies on whose boards I now sit are young, nimble, and Pacific Northwest-based. One founder/CEO is Generation X, and the other is a millennial. In both boardrooms, there is a steady, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes threatening AI beat.

Almost 30 years ago, Harvard Business School professor and author Clayton Christensen wrote “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” the business bible that introduced the term “disruptive innovation.” When Christensen first coined the term, he explained why successful companies often fail when faced with disruptive technologies, innovations that create new markets or displace established ones, even when they listen to their current customers and do everything “right.”

When Christensen’s book came out in 1997, I read it as a brand-new Dell executive. Dell Computer Corp. (now part of Dell Technologies Inc.) was a hugely “disruptive” force in the personal computer industry. Having lived through that revolution, I began to grasp how important it is for me, as a board member, to fulfill my duty of care by understanding as much as possible the challenges AI presents.

I started looking for a continuing education course that might help me better absorb what I saw in board materials and heard in the boardroom. This included learning a dizzying array of new terms or old terms with new meanings, such as:

• LLMs, or large language models, (as a lawyer, I had to retrain my brain to not automatically think of a graduate law degree)
• Agents (not folks helping me land a book publishing deal, but AI systems that can autonomously plan, reason, and execute tasks across different applications)
• Hallucinations (not a drug-induced dream state, but rather when LLMs generate factually inaccurate or illogical answers due to date and architecture constraints)

I found a course offered by Stanford Business School called “AI-Driven Leadership: Strategies for the Future,” which started in early January 2026 and lasted through March. This online course attracted students from around the globe, across industries, and mostly at the VP level.

As far as I could tell, I was the only student who was both a corporate board member and not working for a corporation. I found myself sometimes at sea, no longer knowing what it was like to deal with problems 24/7 as an executive. And the world of business has changed a lot in the 14 years since I last served in an executive role.

As Starbucks Corp. general counsel from 2002-2012, I never so much as uttered the phrase “artificial intelligence.” Across our many Stanford assignments, though, students were encouraged to comment on the work product of fellow students. In responding to case study assignments, I leaned into my ancient executive experience while also being a sponge to the real-world complexities my fellow students face as they tackle AI’s challenges and reap its benefits.

AI may be a newer technology, but good leaders excel at change management, and I surprised myself. Across 10 years creating and leading a global organization, I navigated a lot of change. Many of the themes offered by my Stanford Business School professors sounded amazingly familiar.

For AI to thrive within an organization, leaders must set the right table. They must convincingly build a case for change that is not only profit-centered but also inspires most employees to embrace it. If employees don’t believe, they will fear and sabotage management’s efforts.

Understanding human nature, knowing how to motivate, and being transparent are leadership qualities required for AI to thrive. Are there freedoms and the right guardrails to fail? Are there feedback loops? How good is the data? Are the data scientists and engineers talking to each other?

What about the engineers and salesforce? How are the support functions—legal, human resources, finance, corporate communications, marketing—optimizing or resisting AI? What organizational design is needed to reap maximum AI benefit?

The bottom line: Human resources issues are often more important than even the most sophisticated or groundbreaking coding.

The Stanford course also sensitized me to think more creatively about how AI can make me a better board member. As a board member of publicly traded technology companies, I provide strategic oversight, check organizational performance, and help ensure effective governance.

As a director serving a digital learning platform company, I know these responsibilities require regularly reviewing complex information, watching industry developments, and preparing thoughtful questions for management. As the education technology sector evolves—particularly with the explosion of AI, creator-economy business models, and digital learning platforms—I must process large volumes of information efficiently to make informed strategic decisions.

Generative AI offers significant potential to support this work by improving the efficiency and quality of several recurring tasks in my board member workflow. As part of a homework assignment, I chose to zero in on three specific board tasks that might be made more efficient and effective through GenAI.

The first was (with the right security protocols) reviewing board packets and supporting materials before meetings; the second was monitoring industry and strategic trends that may affect the company’s long-term direction; and the third task involved preparing for board meetings by developing questions and discussion points for management.

I then ranked these GenAI opportunities and prioritized board packet review, concluding that if I better tackled the task of reading and understanding the 100-plus pages of board materials I often receive, I could most quickly enhance my ability to add value in the boardroom.

Though I haven’t yet presented these ideas formally to my boards, I am excited by their potential. And though it was painful at times and I didn’t always enjoy being a student, with its homework and deadlines, I am a believer in continuing education. When it comes to AI, there’s always room for more.

US Army Airborne veteran Paula Boggs is now a musician, speaker, and writer after serving a decade as Starbucks Corporation’s chief legal officer. She writes about leadership, legal ethics, and the legal profession for Good Counsel.

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