Better Boards Conference 2026
Pathfinders – Governing with Courage
31 July - 1 August • Cairns Convention Centre
Presentation
Stewardship in Ecosystem Settings
Sean Johnson
Governance Advisor, Lakefield Drive Pty Ltd
Sean Johnson FGIA MBA LLB GCertEd is a governance advisor, lawyer, and researcher specialising in institutional design, legitimacy, and governance in complex and regional systems.
Sean has held senior governance and leadership roles within Australian universities, including James Cook University, where his work spanned governance, equity, law and conflict resolution, and institutional reform. His experience includes engagement with university regulatory frameworks, council and committee governance, and the practical consequences of compliance-driven governance in both metropolitan and regional settings.
He has also worked with and advised national professional bodies and peak member organisations on governance reform, professional standards, and conflict of interest frameworks.
He is currently Company Secretary of Dietitians Australia and the Dietitian and Nutritionist Regulatory Council, and was formerly Company Secretary of the North Queensland Primary Health Network. Sean has held multiple senior governance roles, including Chair and Chair of Risk, Finance, and Audit Committees, across not-for-profit, health, and professional association contexts.
Through his North Queensland–based advisory practice, Lakefield Drive, Sean supports boards and executives across the not-for-profit, education, health, and professional association sectors. His work includes governance reform, risk-based decision-making, board effectiveness, and governance design. He has delivered governance education and training for the Governance Institute of Australia, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and through bespoke in-house programs.
Sean has had an extensive legal career, including roles as a partner in a national firm, principal of his own practice, and Principal Legal Officer for a large First Nations legal service.
He is a Senior Research Fellow (Adjunct) at James Cook University and the author of peer-reviewed and practitioner publications on governance friction, conflicts of interest, privacy and legitimacy, platform governance, and the evolving role of the Company Secretary. In 2025, he published The Modern Association Playbook and The Economics of Modern Associations and is a regular contributor to Governance Directions. He is a member of the Governance Institute of Australia and serves on the Queensland State Council as Regional Membership Lead.
Boards of not-for-profit organisations are increasingly accountable for outcomes that emerge beyond the boundaries of their organisation. Funding volatility, regulatory reform, partnership dependency and rights-based service models mean that success is now shaped by complex ecosystems of funders, regulators, partners, communities and service users. Yet most governance frameworks remain organisation-centric, leaving boards with responsibility for outcomes they only partially control.
This workshop reframes board oversight through an ecosystem governance lens. It challenges traditional stakeholder management approaches and introduces a practical framework for governing participation, risk and value creation in systems where outcomes are co-produced rather than delivered unilaterally.
Drawing on platform thinking as a governance capability, not a technology solution, the session equips boards to authorise ecosystem participation with clarity and courage. Participants will explore how boards can steward value systems by setting guardrails, approving participation, and monitoring system health alongside organisational performance, without drifting into operational management.
The session includes a worked case study from in-home aged care following recent regulatory reforms, a sector familiar to many conference delegates. Through a guided exercise, participants will map critical ecosystem nodes, identify dependencies and redundancies, and test how governance choices can either strengthen or weaken system resilience.
Designed for chairs, directors, CEOs and company secretaries, this session provides practical governance insights and tools to help boards lead through uncertainty, create enabling conditions, and govern with confidence in increasingly interdependent environments.
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