Susan F. Shultz

Susan Shultz is recognized as a leading expert in corporate governance. She authored the highly acclaimed The Board Book, Making Your Corporate Board a Strategic Force in your Company's Success (AMACOM) and has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today, Strategic Finance, the Economist, CFO Magazine and numerous other media. She has spoken about corporate boards and executive search at The Business Roundtable; the Economist CFO Forum, Tokyo; The Chengdu Chamber of Commerce, China; “Board Strategies at Private Equity Portfolio Companies”, to private equity executives, New York City; the advanced director symposium at the Anderson School, UCLA; Women Corporate Directors, Mexico City; The Commonwealth Club; the Canadian Chartered Accountants, Montreal; the Financial Executives Int'l Annual Summit, Semantic Annual CIO Symposium; the US-Asia Investment & Business Expo; the INAC search symposium, Amsterdam and Mexico City, various CEO gatherings; and to many other organizations.

Susan founded SSA Executive Search International, Ltd. in 1981, and has conducted senior level searches nationally and internationally, specializing in building and structuring corporate boards. In 2002, Susan founded The Board Institute, Inc., to improve boards of directors through a suite of web-based, independent, educational tools to help directors evaluate, educate and benchmark their boards, committees and individual directors. The Board Institute was the only web-based solution to board education and evaluation accredited by RiskMetrics.

Before establishing SSA, Susan led a marketing firm, an import-export company, and was a consultant/media director for many U.S., state and federal political campaigns. She was a columnist and investigative reporter for Phoenix Magazine for 15 years, and has written for numerous other publications. Prior to that, for five years, she served as Legislative Assistant to Rep. William E. Brock, US Congress, in Washington, DC.

Susan was Nom. Chair, Phoenix Bank, and director of the accredited college subsidiary of TesserAct(Nasdaq). She is President of Charter 100, chaired the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations for 16 years, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (NYC), the Pacific Council on International Policy (Los Angeles), Women Corporate Directors and is a director of the Arizona Technology Council, The Technology Council Foundation, Charter 100 and, formerly, a director, School of Global Studies, ASU, Arizona Tourism Board and was President of the Arizona Business Leadership Association. She served on numerous other boards, was a Presidential Delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business, on the national SBDC board, and is recognized in numerous publications including Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in Finance and Industry.