Bob Arciniaga founder and managing partner of Advisory Board Architects was recently interviewed for a New York Times article that was printed today. The article titled "How To Create an Advisory Board" was written by Adriana Gardella and contains best practices for structuring an advisory board from CEO’s and other business experts who have experience in working with their own advisory boards.

In our opinion this article misses the mark and is somewhat disheartening and sets back diversity even more than the recent SEC rulings (see The SEC Announces Diversity in the Corporate Board Room, from 12/31/09).

Even though we are a minority owned firm I have mentioned many times in this blog and my conversations and speeches that ABA does not believe in ethnic or gender consideration as a predictive qualifier to whether an individual is going to add value to an organization at a corporate board or advisory board level. ABA believes in "the right board members on the right boards for the right strategic reasons".

This is probably one of the frequently most asked questions that I get as the founder of ABA. I tend to have the same answer for everyone as it is a very loaded question. "Why?" Which normally takes them aback given our business and since I often ask in a similar fashion as you might ask someone why they would jump out of a perfectly good airplane without a gun to their head. What I am really asking is what are your objectives in trying to get on a board and what are you going to do once you are there?

Bob Arciniaga Founder of Advisory Board Architects recently co-authored an article with Jeff Fitzgerald who is a Partner with the law firm of Faegre and Benson called "The Updated AdvaMed Code-Is It Time to Reassess Your Advisory Board?" We have blogged about this issue in the past as The Revised and Restated Code of Ethics on Interactions with Health Care Professionals became effective June 1st.

ABA's Founder is quoted in a great article about advisory boards for GO Magazine.

We have taken excerpts of an article that was published in the August edition of GO Magazine titled "Get on Board" by Jennifer Pellet. The full article can also be accessed at http://www.airtranmagazine.com/features/2009/08/get-on-board

Denver, Colorado - July 15, 2009 - Advisory Board Architects (ABA), an industry leader in high-level corporate advisory board management, is pleased to announce that GH Phipps Construction Companies has selected ABA to design, build, manage and leverage a new advisory board based on ABA proprietary methodologies and processes to primarily focus on strategies to escalate growth in revenues and geographies.

p>The Advanced Medical Technology Association, AdvaMed recently announced the revised and restated Code of Ethics on Interactions with Health Care Professionals. AdvaMed members range from the largest to the smallest medical technology innovators and companies. The new regulations went into effect July 1, 2009.

Follow up to our recent posting The Old Boys Network is Dead (Part 1)

In our most recent posting we discussed how changes in "who" gets to be a director are being discussed at a congressional level. We also discussed in another recent posting how the SEC was going to propose sweeping changes that will give shareholders greater access to the director nomination process. It seems now there is also a new bill being proposed by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer similar to the proposals that the SEC has now voted to amend this week.

Or at least it should be!! This posting is going to be the first in a three part series focused on how things are changing in board structure and strategy that more closely resemble the way ABA has always built, managed and analyzed boards of directors and advisory boards. In Part 1, we will begin to analyze "who" needs to be on your board. Parts 2 and 3 will go through what board members need to be contributing in today's economic climate and regulatory environment and finally some best practices on how to implement this change in your organization.