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Priscilla Brice GAICD is an advocate for asking the right questions, lived experience and mature skills.
Priscilla Brice believes that in certain circumstances, lived experience is as important as technical skills on a board.
“If a board values this skillset, it needs to have a substantial proportion of people with lived experience as members — and to ensure they have enough say and aren’t shut down for expressing their views.”
A Churchill Fellow, Brice is CEO of consumer peak body, the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance, and former CEO of BEING Mental Health Consumers. They have been a non-executive director at People With Disability Australia, the Mental Health Coordinating Council, Web Industry Professionals Association and All Together Now, where they led award-winning advocacy campaigns to champion racial equity.
Lesson 1: Lived experience is as important as technical expertise
At People with Disability Australia (PWDA) everything we did was grounded in the rights, experiences and leadership of people with disability. To become a member, you must identify as a person with disability – and to serve on the board, you must be a member. As a result, the entire board was made up of people with lived experience of disability.
People with disability are rarely given genuine opportunities to lead. So, when we do take up leadership roles, we don’t do so lightly. We work hard to ensure our decisions reflect our experiences navigating systems and services, which bring an intimate understanding of the issues our members face. We are deeply connected to its purpose and mission, which makes our leadership more meaningful and effective.
The PWDA board also had different cultural backgrounds, gender identities and community backgrounds. This diversity strengthened our ability to advocate, govern and represent the full breadth of our community. I can’t imagine the board functioning any other way. The lived experience of disability isn’t optional — it’s essential. Without it, it would be impossible to understand and respond to the complex barriers the members face every day.
Lesson 2: Finding the right people for an NFP board
When we advertised the role of treasurer, we were contacted by a lot of people who wanted a not-for-profit board role. Many were seeking their first board and thought the best place to start was on a NFP. They were also generous people, who were working in corporate or government roles and wanted to give back to society.
However, even though we had a lot of applicants, it was challenging to find people with both the right mindset and values, plus the skills.
We were a small organisation, but couldn’t afford for our board to be a training ground. We needed mature board skills to be able to help the organisation move forward, bring in more income and have great governance.
In the end, we were able to find an excellent candidate through asking people in our network to introduce us to their contacts. It was a probing search and we focused hard on asking the right questions in the interview to ensure there was a values match between the organisation and the successful candidate.
I’m not sure there was a perfect solution to finding the right candidate for the NFP, but it came down to utilising the strength of our network and taking the time needed to find the right person.
Lesson 3: Implement a system of robust feedback for the chair
Sometimes a chair is appointed at a time when they are the right fit for the organisation. Then, over time, the organisation evolves, but they don’t evolve with it. You can end up with a chair who isn’t the right person for the role anymore, but it is difficult to remove them. I have spoken with a number of governance consultants who have said, in reality, they basically have to choose to resign.
A board in that situation is stuck with a chair who is no longer the right person and can’t – or won’t – move on. This is difficult, because the chair is the most important person on the board.
It’s therefore important for boards to have a process in place to give the chair robust feedback on a regular basis. Sometimes, the chair is very dominant and board members feel they can’t give candid feedback. It isn’t an easy situation to navigate.
In my experience on one particular board, this process was missing and it became a huge issue for the organisation. I joined the organisation when the chair was no longer adding value. If it were me, I would’ve set up expectations right from the beginning when we were onboarding the chair, so there would be regular opportunities for two-way feedback.
This article first appeared as 'Going beyond the expected' in the Aug/Sep 2026 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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