Better Boards Conference 2026
Pathfinders – Governing with Courage
31 July - 1 August • Cairns Convention Centre
Presentation
Innovation Without Big-Tech Budgets: Governing with Courage Under Resource Constraints
Wenda Gumulya
Board Chair, Hoshizora Foundation
Wenda is the Co-founder and Board Chair of the Hoshizora Foundation, an education NGO supporting thousands of students, teachers, and communities in Indonesia. Equipped with strong cultural intelligence and fluency in English, Japanese, and Indonesian, Wenda also leads several initiatives across Australia, Asia, Europe, and Africa, aimed at fostering positive societal change. This includes serving as the Board Advisor for the Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC), an initiative in collaboration with UNDP, Columbia University, Explorate, and Pathfinder, which engages youth and professionals in the sustainability sectors globally to develop climate-related solutions. She is also the Co-Chair of the Future Leaders Group of the Australia-Japan Business Cooperation Committee (AJBCC), working closely with Boards and Senior Management of Australian and Japanese corporations, as well as government officials from both countries.
Wenda is also an experienced Management Consulting Director. With extensive professional working experience in Japan and Australia, she brings a wealth of expertise in strategy and transformation, technology implementation, impact and sustainability, external and internal audits, corporate governance, and risk management to her leadership roles.
This session explores how boards can govern innovation and AI with confidence when resources are limited. It reframes innovation away from large, expensive technology projects and toward small, low-risk experiments that can be safely tested, learned from, and either scaled or stopped. The focus is on courage in governance: giving permission to try, setting clear boundaries, and acting before full certainty, while still protecting the organisation’s mission, people, and values.
Directors are introduced to a simple and practical governance framework for approving small-scale innovation initiatives (under $5,000 per year). Through the ‘Gate Check’ method, the session clarifies what boards are responsible for approving, such as purpose, guardrails, risk, and budget ceilings, and what should be left to management, including technical and operational decisions. This helps reduce unintentional board-level bottlenecks that often delay or prevent innovation in not-for-profit organisations.
The session includes real-world case studies of low-cost AI experiments, such as reducing administrative burden and improving visual storytelling, demonstrating how meaningful value can be created with minimal financial and operational risk. These examples show how AI can support staff wellbeing, productivity, and consistent communication without becoming ‘big and risky tech’.
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