About NACD

Elevate Board Performance

NACD empowers more than 22,000 directors to lead with confidence in the boardroom. As the recognized authority on leading boardroom practices, NACD helps boards strengthen investor trust and public confidence by ensuring that today's directors are well prepared for tomorrow's challenges.

World-class boards join NACD to elevate performance, gain foresight, and instill confidence. Fostering collaboration among directors, investors, and governance stakeholders, NACD has been setting the standard for responsible board leadership for more than 40 years.

View a video about the history of NACD here.

Mission

We empower directors and transform boards to be future ready.

Vision

Corporate boards are recognized as trusted catalysts of economic opportunity and positive change — in business and in the communities they serve.

Values

We are one NACD.
We succeed through member impact.
We communicate openly.
We deliver.
We are continuous learners.
We are innovators.

Director Education

NACD has established the standard for director education in the spirit of helping corporate directors foster boardroom cultures focused on continuous improvement, long-term value creation, and strengthening investor trust and public confidence. Using its proprietary director education framework, NACD creates the most comprehensive director knowledge pathway—from awareness to insights to mastery.

NACD is continually adapting our director-education approach to enable directors to get ahead of emerging issues in a rapidly changing environment. As boardrooms witness more first-time directors than ever before and the expectations for directors continue to increase, NACD offers the first US-based certification program for corporate directors: NACD Directorship Certification^®. The program equips directors with essential knowledge and elevates the profession of directorship as a whole.

To help boards navigate the interconnected forces presented by the digital era, NACD also offers experiential educational opportunities, such as curated director tours of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES^®) and access to the latest business incubators leveraging technology in Silicon Valley. NACD has also led an effort to close the board's knowledge gap on cyber risk through educating its members on leading practices, convening key stakeholders, and engaging the director community in an ongoing dialogue.

Finally, as part of the organization's transformative efforts in director education and to inspire a broader audience, NACD has launched the Future Fluency podcast to examine how an enterprise's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and innovation is key to unlocking long-term prosperity and growth.