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Take on Board Accelerator: Hannah Browne

From novice to competent and capable

Technology entrepreneur and 5-times start-up founder Hannah Browne had worked towards a seat in the boardroom for 25 years.

“It has been one of my career goals for as long as I can remember,” she said. “The boardroom is a crucial seat of power and influence. I’d butted up against the ‘frozen middle’ management for a decade trying to drive transformative agendas. In the boardroom we read papers, discuss and vote to make decisions that fundamentally determine an organisation’s future.”

Hannah approached a Greenpeace contact in 2019, hoping to join the organisation’s tech advisory committee. She then joined the General Assembly and found her way onto the Greenpeace nominations committee with myself and Amber Roberts.

Then news came that Greenpeace needed a technologist on the board so Hannah stepped down from the nominations committee so she could apply.

Elected to the Greenpeace board, she immediately enrolled in the 12-month Take on Board Accelerator program to guide her director progress and support her boardroom journey.

Key outcomes

  • Accelerator provided a ‘brains trust’ for group guidance and support
  • Hannah gained the skills and support to be a competent and capable board member

Accelerator took me from feeling a total novice to competent, capable and ready to perform in the Greenpeace board role. The AICD course was useful from an academic perspective, but Accelerator joined the dots for me connecting ‘best practice’ with what actually manifested in the boardroom."

Hannah Browne, non-executive director, Greenpeace

The right peer support to learn and grow

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Hannah said of her initial experiences in the boardroom. “It was crystal clear to me that I needed to do Accelerator. It was my best avenue to get up-to-speed quickly. I knew from KickStarter that it would be great. Peer learning. That’s how I like to learn.”

Hannah and her 9 Accelerator peers met via Zoom in February 2021, right at the end of Melbourne’s third lockdown. “It was the first time I’d seen Zoom used effectively,” Hannah said of both KickStarter and Accelerator.

Coffee catch-ups and small group discussions

A part of this peer group learning is networking through one-on-one coffee catch-ups (a mix of Zoom and in-person, depending on where people are located). The Accelerator syllabus covered 9 themed topics over the 12 months, which the group chose to focus on for the year. Each participant led small group discussions around the set topics.

Headshot of Hannah Browne

Accelerator alumni

2021

About Hannah

Hannah is a technology leader, company founder, non-executive director and culture advocate. She champions greater technology knowledge and capability in executive teams and boardrooms.

Board roles

  • Nominations committee, Greenpeace (former)
  • Technology advisory board, Greenpeace
  • Philanthropy working group, Greenpeace
  • Non-executive director, Greenpeace

Board qualifications

Bringing vulnerability to the Accelerator table

Joining a 50-year-old organisation’s board raised some challenges for a progressive and tech-savvy new director like Hannah. Despite finding it “daunting at first”, she discussed some of the board dynamics with her Accelerator group.

“The depth of conversation and the depth of vulnerability people shared was extraordinary,” Hannah said of the experience.

“As a result of that session, I was able to separate out several intertwined issues and get perspective from the other Accelerator participants. The peer review was very grounding and gave me meaningful validation on what I was grappling with.”

She said the shared experience and knowledge was invaluable. “Other participants shared some powerful stories from their lived experience and provided guidance, advice and practical strategies to not only navigate the situation, but to thrive throughout and beyond.”

Building board experience and a new business

Claiming to be a workhorse who bites off more than she can chew and then “chews like crazy”, Hannah is juggling Greenpeace board duties with a thriving 2-year-old tech start-up called Midnyte City. She has let the hectic Greenpeace nominations committee work go after the successful new chair appointment. There are no plans to add to the board portfolio – yet.

“Within two months I’d achieved two of my biggest career goals,” she said. “I didn’t expect that at 39, in the middle of a pandemic, that I’d be finally running my own company and appointed to my first board.”