Wolfe Tone & Heather Gates (Deloitte): Insights on Private Company Governance

Boardroom Governance with Evan Epstein

(0:00) Intro

(1:12) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(1:59) Start of interview.

(2:57) Heather Gates' "origin story."

(5:17) Wolfe Tone's "origin story."

(10:23) On the governance of privately-owned businesses. Distinction with having "outside investors."

(15:20) On the nuances of family-owned businesses. *Reference to my podcast series on Succession show.

(18:28) On growth of LLC structures.

(20:53) On VC-backed company governance. *Note UC Law SF's VCBA.

(23:42) On the value of boards and good governance. When is the right time for a more formal governance structure.

(27:40) Deloitte Private Company Pulse Survey on Governance (from July 2024).

(31:40) On Climate Risk and ESG in private companies.

(34:16) On Cybersecurity Risk.

(38:20) On the evolving role of independent directors in private companies.

(42:28) On the rise of the public benefit corporation (PBC) structure in AI companies

(46:08) On the role of the board in developing talent.

(48:38) On the future of trust as a core tenant of governance.

(50:38) What are the 1-3 books that have greatly influenced your life:

1. Wolfe:
   1. The Art of War by Sun Tzu (roughly 5th century BC)
   2. Anything by Stephen Covey.
   3. When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box by John Ortberg (2007)
2. Heather:
   1. The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (2014)
   2. Boundary Boss by Terri Cole (2021)
   3. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer (2007)

(51:52) Who were their mentors, and what they learned from them.

(53:36) Quotes they think of often or live their life by.

(54:13) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that they love.

(54:40) The living person they most admire.

Wolfe Tone is the leader of Deloitte Private for the US and globally, and Heather Gates is the national Emerging Growth Company (EGC) business leader for Deloitte, overseeing the firm’s EGC, Private Equity, and Deloitte Private Audit & Assurance teams.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License