Better Boards Conference 2026
Pathfinders – Governing with Courage
31 July - 1 August • Cairns Convention Centre
Presentation
Chairing in Complexity - Reset Tools for Courageous Boardrooms
Janet Attwood
Director, Women's Health NSW and Chair, Central Coast Community Women's Health Centre
Janet Attwood, GAICD, Founder & Managing Director at Jaei Advisory, is a cross-sector governance leader who helps boards and executives navigate complexity with clarity, confidence and practical discipline — especially when organisations are under pressure or needing to change.
She's worked across the full governance system as a Board Chair and NED, executive, secretariat leader, regulator and advisor, giving her a rare perspective on how governance holds up in real organisations, not just on paper.
Janet spent nearly two decades with the NSW WHS regulator, SafeWork NSW, and brings a regulator-informed view of what 'good' looks like under scrutiny — and what tends to go wrong when boards rely on reassurance instead of assurance. Her broader public-sector experience includes leading business and digital transformation and organisational design across NSW government agencies, strengthening her ability to help organisations modernise how they work while protecting accountability and purpose.
She currently holds board roles across the not-for-profit sector, including Women's Health NSW and the Central Coast Community Women’s Health Centre, and works with not-for-profit, government and industry organisations to build capability that delivers better community outcomes.
Janet is known for spotting patterns and emerging risks early — often before they show up in formal reporting — and for helping organisations shift from reactive firefighting to calmer, preventative decision-making. Her work focuses on strengthening governance habits and systems that improve oversight, embed compliance by design, and protect decision quality as conditions change.
A specialist in helping boards govern at the right altitude, Janet equips directors to know when to zoom out for strategic clarity and when to zoom in to test risk, culture, safety and operational pressure. She translates complexity into practical tools boards can use immediately. Janet holds a Master’s in OHS Management, is a graduate of the AICD Company Directors Course, and also holds qualifications in Public Sector Leadership, Government (workplace inspection) Audit, Autism, Health and Social Science.
She is currently writing Purpose Under Pressure: Essential governance conversations for modern charities and not-for-profits — a conversation-led work designed to be read, returned to and used when familiar governance patterns show up in new forms. It supports boards to hold the right conversation at the right time, at the right level, as confidence becomes harder to hold, trust moves faster, and capability gaps increasingly show up as governance risk.
Chairing today is a different job than it used to be. The pressure is higher, expectations are sharper, and the room is full of competing needs — directors wanting clarity, executives needing support, and an operating environment that won’t sit still. Chairs are expected to set the tone, guide productive discussion, and hold a strong relationship with the CEO without drifting into micromanagement.
For NFP chairs, there’s an added layer: public trust and accountability, and governance duties that must still be met when resources are stretched and scrutiny is real. In that context, courage isn’t a personality trait. It’s something you can design into the meeting through agenda choices, decision framing, and how the chair intervenes when the conversation drifts.
This workshop is practical and built from lived boardroom experience and a regulator-informed lens — where you learn quickly what holds up under pressure. We’ll work on three chair skills that make the biggest difference in complex meetings. We’ll practice reset moments — short, calm interventions that lift clarity and bring the board back to what matters. Janet will also share two other chair disciplines that help you hold the right altitude and support robust challenge without it getting personal.
Chairs will leave with a simple meeting rhythm and adaptable language they can use immediately to keep their boards focused, courageous and effective when it counts.
Master the art of the boardroom
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