Achieve Governance Excellence. Learn to lead effective boards, manage risk, and drive strategic success for sustainable organizational prosperity.
This course explores the board practices and leadership roles that cultivate a more effective and more engaged Board of Directors. Many organizations have a Board of Directors appointed by a group of stakeholders to represent the collective or specific interests; however, a common challenge is making the Board of Directors an asset of the organization and not an extra expense. A highly effective Board of Directors can be another point of competitive advantage for an organization to help it stand out amongst its peers.
This course explores four key cooperative board leadership roles shared by executives and directors to achieve governance excellence. We’ll apply these roles in two critical board contexts—strategic management and risk oversight—highlighting how management can engage directors to leverage their expertise. Participants will gain insights on fulfilling fiduciary duties and contributing to the organization’s direction.

CPA, CA Leadership
Blair is a seven-time CFO, a director, and an educator at Executive Finance Partners - a professional development and executive coaching firm for financial professionals and executives. He also serves as a corporate director and audit committee chair of publicly listed companies: Terravest Industries and Clarke Inc. He is also the Board Treasurer of the Devour Food & Film Festival and serves on various committees of CPA Nova Scotia. Blair is the author of The Illiterate Executive: An Executive’s Handbook for Mastering Financial Acumen.
This portal is provided as a training and development resource for City of Markham employees. Every course is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, is quantifiable in hours, and is verifiable — you receive a documented certificate of completion for every course you finish, stored on LearnFormula indefinitely.
If you hold a professional designation (for example in engineering, accounting, human resources, or law), courses may be counted as professionally relevant, verifiable learning activities toward your continuing professional development. Individual practitioners are responsible for confirming that an activity meets the requirements of their professional body. For questions about the City of Markham's training and development policies, please speak with your people leader or Human Resources.