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- Younger directors contribute a current understanding of the lives of customers, staff and shareholders.
- They will be part of the workforce and communities for decades, and can effectively drive and influence where capital is spent.
- Consider including them by adding a seat at the board table.
When it comes to board composition, a line is often drawn between the future and the past. Organisations urgently need the lived experience of younger directors to understand modern tech and workforce dynamics, while simultaneously relying on the deep governance wisdom and corporate history of seasoned veterans.
“We need to be future-proofing organisations today by channeling the insights of young directors... We can’t wait until those people are 65." – Belinda Bentley
"You can't have a bunch of 20-year-olds sitting on a board. There needs to be a mix of corporate history, wisdom, depth of governance experience..." – Michelle Gardiner
The two perspectives are not in opposition, but the age-old trope of a bunch of venerable white people dominating ASX boardrooms is largely reaffirmed in the 12th edition of the Watermark Search International 2026 Board Diversity Index, compiled in association with the AICD and Deloitte, and released on 10 June this year.
Although gains continue to be made in the number of women on ASX 300 boards (at 38%, it has crept up from 36% in 2024 and 37% in 2025), and in the number of female chairs (11 new women were appointed since 2025, bringing the total to 49), the cultural diversity of boards has declined from its zenith in 2017, when 9.5% of directors were from non-Anglo-Celtic backgrounds to this year’s 6.5%. And the average age of company directors is steady at 60.9.
Data on the number of younger people serving on non-ASX-listed boards is less available, but anecdotally, this is the area in which younger people can hope to gain board experience.
How young is young?
Michelle Gardiner, Managing Partner at Derwent, a leading Australian executive and board search firm, describes “young” as a relative term. Given that the average age of ASX 300 directors is 61, she says, “Quite frankly, someone under 50 is considered pretty young”.
The field for younger aspirants in their 20s and 30s, says Gardiner, is in “specific areas” where youth is seen as “important”.
For example, “Technology governance – whether it’s AI, cyber or digital strategy – is a defining boardroom challenge at the moment that absolutely plays to younger directors’ strengths,” she says.
Gardiner includes not-for-profits, association and membership boards, and some government boards among the categories where young people are more sought-after.
Institutions forced to take the leap
In 2025, the New South Wales government mandated that the boards of six major cultural institutions (including the Sydney Opera House and the Art Gallery of NSW) must each have a director aged between 18 and 28 at the start of their tenure. State Minister for the Arts John Graham, who drove the adoption of the Cultural Institutions Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, said at the time, “Young, next-generation practitioners and audiences are essential to strengthen NSW’s arts, culture and creative industries for the long term.”
Six accomplished proponents of the arts and sciences within the prescribed age range have since been appointed, including awarded novelist, essayist, poet and educator Vivian Pham, who sits on the governing body of the State Library of NSW; and Elijah Ingram, filmmaker and digital artist, who contributes to the governance and direction of Museums of History NSW. Each new director has also been supported by the AICD to undertake the Foundations of Directorship (Public Sector) course.
It’s notable that each board was expanded by one seat to accommodate the new appointments – no reshuffle of the existing line-up was required.
Australian boards have, “a bit of an issue with tenure structures,” says Gardiner. She emphasises the importance of ensuring a balance of experience on boards as well as a succession of directors – from the “battle-scarred” to those with fresh perspectives. “There is a changing of the guard, you might call it a generational shift,” she says, but adds that traditionally long tenure structures, where people frequently sit on boards for multiple terms of three to four years, “don’t lead to the ability to bring on new talent in leaps and bounds”.
Belinda Bentley and the built environment
At 40, Belinda Bentley FAICD has chalked up 11 years in a variety of board roles with not-for-profit Link Housing, which then became Link Wentworth in a merger of two NSW entities dedicated to providing affordable, social, and specialist disability housing. The organisation now manages some 6200 homes with around 10,000 residents and 200 staff.
“It’s been quite a journey to get to where we are today,” says Bentley, who is passionate about Link Wentworth’s commitment to improving lives through quality affordable housing. As a director, she says she shows up not only at board meetings but also at tenant advisory group meetings, staff conferences, and more. “I want our residents, staff and partnership organisations to see that as a director: one, I care; two, I’m committed; and three, directors aren’t all 70 years old and we can be relatable.”
In 2016, Bentley also co-founded and became Managing Director of Sydney-based 9Springs, an independent property investment, advisory and project management group. In addition, she has concurrently held a number of academic and advisory roles in Built Environment and Design and Society at the University of Technology Sydney, and is an active member of international organisation, the Urban Land Institute, sitting on various committees and awards juries.
In short, she works hard to contribute to best property industry practice at the board table, and was recently appointed a Fellow of both the AICD and the Governance Institute of Australia. “I think it’s possible to be under 50 and be acknowledged for your contribution to a board and a governance environment,” she says.
“I never wanted to be just a young person on the committee”
In 2015, Bentley was a self-funded graduate of the AICD Company Directors Course and was keen to put her skills to work, when she applied to become a member of Link Housing’s Development & New Business committee. She was accepted on the basis of her experience in property with organisations including EG and Property NSW.
She says the committee was “very inclusive – the chair at the time really took me under his wing”. Her commitment to rising on her merits saw her formally appointed to the Link Housing board in 2018. She gained invaluable experience during the merger that resulted in Link Wentworth.
Still the youngest person on the board, Bentley now chairs the People and Culture committee and sits on the Risk and Improvement committee.
She says that 10 years ago, boards weren’t actively recruiting young directors, but for her, youth wasn’t the only omission in the make-up of boards at the time. Of course, there was the male-female imbalance – in 2016, only 20% of ASX 300 board positions were held by women. “I’m also half-Chinese, so I kept looking at boards and at leadership roles and questioning how the people in those roles didn’t reflect my age, my gender, my cultural background or my lived experience.”
As the data confirms, progress on all measures of board diversity is slow, and Bentley, for one, is frustrated. She believes Australian boards talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, but “I question those who have the ability to make structural leadership changes on boards. Is it just the right commentary to give when they have the forum to do so? Because the statistics reflect something completely different.”
Baffled by the executive barrier
For the past five years or so, Bentley has felt she has the experience and capacity to take on a second board appointment, and is frequently approached by recruiters, but is just as frequently told she hasn’t made the shortlist because she holds an executive role (at 9Springs). She says young aspiring directors, because of their life stage, are likely to hold an executive role. “It doesn’t discount our ability to be a valuable contributor and meet our fiduciary duties at the boardroom table as well.”
Things won't change, she says, “if you don’t accept that young directors are not semi-retired at 40”.
Among the very few people under 40 on Australian boards, Bridget Loudon-Harris (co-founder and CEO of online skilled-talent recruitment firm Expert360) is still referred to with a sense of awe – that then Telstra chair John Mullen appointed her as a director in 2020, when she was 32.
“It was the first time something as daring as that had been done,” says Gardiner. Loudon-Harris’ main perceived credential was her expertise as the founder of a successful tech firm, but Gardiner says, “Talk to John about it today and he’ll tell you she brought a customer perspective and a staff perspective. She was the demographic and she was asking different questions that probably weren’t front of mind for the experienced, wise directors already at the table.”
A mixture of experience levels on any board remains important, she says, “but I’m a massive advocate for diversity on boards in all its complexity. That includes age, gender, skills, cultural background”.
Who dares, stands to win.
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