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The June 26 retreat followed the same storyline as our August 2025 retreat again focused on CEO Succession. Held over three days, the retreat encompassed the process, challenges and war stories that the advisors and attendees had experienced in bringing new leadership into their companies. It was attended by 25 board and committee chairs and held at Limerick Lane Cellars in Healdsburg, California.
This time we had a wide ranging discussion on planning and executing a change in CEO, from the anticipated to the emergency, from friendly to hostile and everyone learned something new from the intense questioning and discussion. The format of our retreat, which is held in the great room of the winery farmhouse under Chatham House Rules, led to a powerful level of openness and peer-to-peer exchange.
The sponsors for this retreat were Egon Zehnder, Pearl Meyer, Collected Strategies, WSGR and Perella Weinberg. It was accompanied by dinners in excellent Healdsburg restaurants and in the olive grove of the winery and included wine tasting at Limerick Lane Cellars.
Held in April 2026 over three days, the retreat was focused on the compensation challenges facing public company boards. It was attended by over 20 compensation committee chairs and board chairs, sponsored by trusted advisors and held at Limerick Lane Cellars in Healdsburg, California.
The group discussed a number of challenging topics and held many deep discussions on a wide range of topics. They talked through the current use of AI and real time data to help compensation teams compete, be more productive and reduce costs. They learned how to automate their processes to manage and understand regulatory changes that affect compensation. They covered moon shots and how to think about CEO pay in many difficult circumstances, including with founders as CEO. They talked through risks, the views of the Delaware courts today and the processes boards and compensation committees can use to manage their risk while being creative in designing effective compensation for their executive teams.
The sponsors for this retreat were Semler-Brossy, Joele Frank, Datamaran, WSGR and Compa.ai. It was accompanied by dinners in excellent Healdsburg restaurants and wine tasting at Limerick Lane Cellars.
Attended by 25 public company board chairs over three days and sponsored by trusted advisors, the discussion focused on the challenges and processes associated with planning and executing a change of CEO for a public company.
CEO Succession is rarely smooth and easy. CEOs change for many reasons – they retire, their performance is not satisfactory, the market changes and the needs change, they have life events that surprise them – any number of reasons. As a result boards need to be discussing CEO succession on a continuous basis. They need to be in touch with an advisor (usually an executive recruiting firm) and keeping an eye on the market. They need to be giving feedback to the CEO and continuously assessing his/her performance.
But it is a sensitive topic, unnerving to some CEOs. So the process and transparency is important.
Our retreat was held at Limerick Lane Cellars in Healdsburg CA and we created an environment of learning and discussion, under Chatham House Rules, for board chairs to both learn from our advisors and from each other. We shared difficult experiences and changes in Delaware law; we discussed how to deal with outrageous demands and emotional reactions. The feedback from the attendees was uniformly strongly positive about the event.
The idea came from Penny’s experience in 2024 – described in her blog post HERE.
The CEO Succession Retreat was sponsored by Egon Zehnder, Wilson Sonsini, Pearl Meyer and Collected Strategies and we partnered with Madam Chair.
