Alan Jones:

Becoming more than an average Director

On the face of it, Alan Jones might not seem like the type of person who would need help in landing a board role. A successful and widely influential Angel Investor, Alan Jones might not seem like the type of person who would need help in landing a board role. Alan was already on the boards of three different organisations before he started Future Directors’ Board Ready Program. But there was something missing from his repertoire that Alan was determined to set straight.

While Alan had already achieved what many would consider boardroom success, he hadn’t yet managed to land a director role for a listed company. And as a highly motivated individual, this was top of Alan’s to-do list. Not only did he see it as a challenging and interesting objective to pursue, he also saw the personal, professional and financial rewards that would come from landing such a role. And so, when thinking about the steps he needed to take in order to achieve this goal, he decided to enlist outside help.

After exploring the possibilities of boardroom courses that exist in Australia, Alan became frustrated at the lack of diversity on offer. He felt that many were over-priced, too conservative and didn’t reflect the diversity of industry that Alan believes in.

And then he found Future Directors. With a philosophy and culture committed to lining up the next generation of young directors and to change the landscape of boardrooms so that they are more gender, culture and age diverse, Future Directors was the perfect fit for Alan. And on the course, Alan got everything he was hoping for. He met a diverse range of individuals, each with their own unique skill sets and determinations. For Alan, this was a major boost, and he felt that he was part of a larger project that was seriously disrupting the director space in a positive way.

Not only that, the program also helped Alan to re-focus on his goal of landing a board role for a listed company. He decided that he needed to make subtle changes in order to achieve his objective. And, with the help of the Future Directors team and their group of highly reputable board directors on hand, he managed to assess what it was that he could offer to a listed company board already, and new skills and qualities that he needed to improve upon to make himself an even more attractive proposition to those companies.

Soon after finishing the program, Alan achieved his objective and found a director role with Catalysr – a startup incubator that works with exceptional individuals from migrant and refugee backgrounds. Now he’s able to fulfil his goal of making further in-roads into the director space, while supporting a project that he’s passionate about, and doing it without making compromises along the way.

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