Corporate governance is being tested by a risk environment in which geopolitical uncertainty, technological change, sustainability pressures and regulatory complexity increasingly intersect at board level. Against this backdrop, the Corporate Secretaries International Association (CSIA) has entered into a strategic collaboration with Global Advisory Alliance (GAA) to strengthen the exchange of governance knowledge and practical expertise across international markets.
The collaboration brings together CSIA’s international community of corporate secretaries and governance professionals with GAA’s network of independent advisers, creating a platform for comparing how boards and organisations are responding to disruption across different markets. CSIA says its 12 member associations represent more than 100,000 corporate secretaries and governance professionals across three continents, giving the initiative a substantial professional network through which emerging governance practices can be examined and shared.
The partnership reflects a broader shift in the responsibilities facing boards. Issues that were previously managed within separate corporate functions are increasingly connected. Geopolitical developments can affect supply chains, investment and regulation; artificial intelligence can create both strategic opportunities and new governance risks; sustainability expectations can influence capital allocation and stakeholder relationships; while regulatory divergence can complicate decisions across jurisdictions.
For boards, the challenge is therefore no longer simply maintaining compliance with established governance requirements. It is ensuring that governance structures can support decision-making when the underlying risks are changing faster than traditional reporting and oversight processes. At the centre of the CSIA-GAA collaboration will be a thought leadership programme drawing on international research, surveys, online events and contributions from practitioners. The programme will examine emerging governance priorities, compare organisational responses across markets and translate those experiences into practical insights for boards and governance professionals.
Funmi Ekundayo, President of CSIA, said
strong governance practices remain important to long-term value creation and described the collaboration as part of CSIA’s commitment to international dialogue and the sharing of governance practices that strengthen board effectiveness and stakeholder confidence.
The role of corporate secretaries is particularly relevant to this changing environment. As the link between boards, management, regulators and governance frameworks, corporate secretaries increasingly have to help organisations interpret issues that cut across regulation, technology, strategy, risk and stakeholder expectations.
Zahra Cassim, CEO of CSIA, said corporate secretaries increasingly operate at the intersection of regulation, board decision-making and complex organisational issues. The collaboration, she said, is intended to help professionals learn from developments in different markets, access specialist perspectives and translate international experience into approaches that can be applied within their own organisations.
The partnership’s first major focus is board effectiveness in an era of continuous disruption. CSIA and GAA are due to host an executive briefing on November 11 titled “Board Effectiveness in an Era of Continuous Disruption”. The online session will examine how boards can remain effective amid continuing economic, geopolitical, technological and regulatory disruption.
The briefing builds on earlier collaboration between the two organisations. In July, CSIA and GAA convened an executive discussion on geopolitical turbulence, examining how boards can strengthen resilience and decision-making as geopolitical developments increasingly influence strategy, supply chains, investment, regulation and reputation.
That discussion highlighted a growing expectation that boards treat geopolitical risk as a governance and strategic issue rather than a specialised item within the corporate risk register. Scenario planning, board education, clearer ownership of geopolitical risks and the use of external expertise were among the approaches discussed. The session also emphasised the need for boards to broaden their perspectives beyond traditional European and North American lenses as Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America become increasingly important to global investment and growth.
The collaboration also extends into sustainability governance. CSIA and GAA have previously worked together on “Reflections on the OECD 2025 Global Corporate Sustainability Report”, examining the implications of sustainability reporting and corporate accountability for boards and governance professionals. GAA’s wider research programme now includes work on sustainability reporting, AI governance, impact investing and geopolitical risk, reflecting the increasingly interconnected nature of the issues boards are expected to oversee.
Responsible artificial intelligence is expected to be another area of focus. For boards, the governance question is increasingly moving beyond whether an organisation should adopt AI to how the technology should be overseen, including questions around accountability, risk, data, decision-making and strategic alignment. GAA has separately identified AI governance as an emerging board-level issue, while CSIA’s recent integrated reporting has highlighted the impact of digital transformation and AI on governance.
The international structure of the partnership is intended to address another challenge: governance practices can vary significantly between markets because of differences in regulation, ownership structures, capital markets and institutional environments. A governance response developed in one jurisdiction may therefore require adaptation before it can be applied elsewhere.
Kapil Lad, Founding Advisor and Emerging Markets Lead at GAA, said some of the most valuable governance lessons come from examining how the same challenge is addressed in different markets. The collaboration is intended to bring experience from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas into a common governance conversation while allowing practitioners to adapt relevant approaches to their own environments.
For African companies and boards, that cross-market dimension is particularly significant. Businesses operating across the continent face different regulatory regimes, capital-market conditions, political environments and institutional capacities. At the same time, regional expansion, international investment and increasingly interconnected supply chains are requiring companies to make decisions across multiple jurisdictions.
Karel Krticka, Founder and Managing Director of GAA, said the objective was not to impose a single governance model across markets, but to create a mechanism through which practitioners could learn from each other. That approach places practical adaptation at the centre of the collaboration, recognising that effective governance depends on both international standards and local operating realities.
The partnership also reflects the expanding role of independent advisory expertise in helping boards navigate issues that cross traditional professional boundaries. GAA describes itself as an international alliance of independent advisory firms covering governance, sustainability, strategy, transformation, technology and investment advisory, with a network spanning more than 20 countries.
For CSIA, the collaboration provides another channel for its wider objective of building a global governance community. The association’s member network already supports the exchange of governance knowledge through research, events, publications and professional programmes, while its current agenda includes board effectiveness, AI, sustainability and governance leadership.
The significance of the CSIA-GAA collaboration will ultimately depend on whether international knowledge can be converted into better board decisions. As risks become more interconnected, boards need governance systems capable of identifying relationships between issues rather than treating each disruption as an isolated event. Cross-market learning can help identify approaches that have worked elsewhere, but their value will depend on how effectively organisations adapt them to their own regulatory, economic and institutional environments.
The emerging governance agenda is therefore less about finding a universal model and more about strengthening the capacity of boards to learn, adapt and make informed decisions under uncertainty. By connecting corporate secretaries, governance professionals and advisers across markets, CSIA and GAA are seeking to make that exchange more systematic as organisations confront an operating environment defined by continuous disruption.
