The Board I Was Afraid to Build

I founded Unify America in 2020. But I was timid – no, afraid – of putting together a robust board. I know it sounds a little crazy, but I was afraid of getting fired. I’m used to being on for-profit boards as a founder. It’s harder to fire a for-profit founder if he owns enough of the stock.  

The fear goes back to when I was in grade school. My mom was on the board of a camp that bussed kids from the inner city to the suburbs to do camp in places with more open space and better facilities. I went to that camp for a couple years. The founder and director was a guy named Jerry. He was the gym teacher at the school that most all the kids at the camp attended. Jerry was this stocky dude with curly hair who wore athletic shorts year round. His voice was permanently hoarse, like a 3-pack a day smoker, except without the smoking. He boomed out commands and love in every direction. He was a force of nature. And the students adored him. Jerry was the camp. 

Some years later, not long after becoming a teenager, my mom explained to me that the board of directors of the camp had fired Jerry.

This blew my mind. “What is a board of directors??” I asked my mother. It sounded like a committee that could decide to decapitate the head off a body. And more or less, that is what it is.

What happened to Jerry is fuzzy, but the possibility, as a founder, of being fired from an organization I created – that haunted me.

So when I started Unify America, I asked two of my closest friends in the world to be on the board. In other words: people who would never, ever fire me.  

In the last two years, I realized I needed MUCH more help. The kind of help that even an A+ staff can’t provide.The kind of help that only an A+ board can provide. So, very carefully, very cautiously, I started to get over my [mostly irrational] fear and started to ask some exceptional leaders to join our board.

And here they are.

Shalyn Kettering, our board chair, legal counsel and right hand to Colorado’s Attorney General (and quite possibly future governor). She magically juggles dozens of high-stakes initiatives without the luxury of a large staff and brings to Unify an eagle eye for legal issues and a rare blend of forward-driving force and unflappable calm.

Fabrice Braunrot, former Vice Chair of J.P. Morgan, adventurous investor/entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind and surgical instinct for asking the questions that cut through the noise and help a leader (me) see the path forward.

Greg Gretsch, founding partner of Jackson Square Ventures in San Francisco, entrepreneur and operator turned VC who has backed the equivalent of two guys in a garage and guided them to a billion-dollar exit…multiple times. Greg is a relentlessly positive idea machine who understands the long game: I’ve been blessed to have him as an institutional investor and board member of both my companies, Jellyvision and Jackbox, going on two decades.

Kerry Jordan, our board treasurer, veteran of Nasdaq and Bank of America, adviser to venture investors and startups alike. She brings serious financial horsepower to Unify America, tightening up our accounting and reporting so they actually help us run the place. Kerry is a clear-eyed steward of our resources and all-in advocate for our mission.

Terry Hackett, Harvard educated, learning leader at McKinsey, veteran of Deloitte with a career designing and delivering transformative learning experiences for thousands of professionals. But he is also the Unify Board OG. Terry and I became best friends in junior high. We made Super-8 films together as teenagers and built Jellyvision together in our late twenties. He brings to Unify his boundless curiosity and journalist’s instinct for listening that sits at the heart of what Unify is about.

Pete Kadens, created and sold outrageously successful companies and then turned that success outward, sending thousands of students and their parents to college tuition-free, a model philanthropic entrepreneur with a bottomless well of energy for improving the world. Pete has already bent over backwards to expand our Democracy League pipeline in Ohio and will now lead the effort to build-out the board Unify America needs, to match the scale of the moment.

So yes, I was afraid to build a real board. And now that I’ve publicly admitted it, I expect the next few board meetings to include at least one ceremonial motion to remove me. =)

What I’ve come to understand is that a real, working board is not a guillotine hovering over a founder’s neck; it’s a rope team on a mountain. You don’t assemble it to protect your job. You assemble it to reach the summit. And with this incredible foundation in place, we can now methodically, thoughtfully identify the next leaders who will help us shoulder the climb to revitalize democracy in America.