AI intelligence for board directors. Free, every Thursday.
Ai for the seat. Not the lecture theatre.
There is an AI strategy and governance gap opening up in boardrooms right now, and it is not what most people think it is.
The problem is not that boards are moving too slowly on AI. A recent BCG survey (May 2026) found that 61% of CEOs believe their boards are rushing AI transformation — and the directors with the lowest AI literacy are the most likely to believe their organisation is moving too slowly. Boards are not behind AI. They are ahead of what they understand. That combination — urgency without fluency, momentum without oversight — is precisely how consequential decisions get made badly, at scale, with D&O exposure attached. A repeat of the insurgents vs the incumbents in the first digital revolution?
The Directors Brief exists to close that gap. From inside the boardroom, not from a consultant’s slide deck.
What you get
Every Thursday, one brief issue — designed to be read before next week’s board pack. Thirty minutes. Five sections:
The Frame — the strategic argument of the week: value creation vs destruction; AI posture; value capture; trust, risk & agentic accountability; what this means for governance & boards?
The Watch — the emerging AI governance development that matter
Five for the Chair — board-ready questions for your next meeting
The Signal — curated AI news that you need to know, to think about & stay ahead
The Library — primers, tools and prompts that build practical AI fluency over time, not just this week. What to try, read, watch or listen to.
Signal, not noise. Judgement, not updates.
Who this is for
You are a chair, NED, or committee chair who is already sophisticated on governance but wants AI to be governable at the same level. You sit on one or more boards — listed, private-equity backed, public sector, or industry bodies — and you are time-poor, evidence-led, and instinctively suspicious of generic AI hype. You have read the FT and a board pack already this morning. You do not need another briefing that tells you AI is important. You need one that tells you what to do about it & how to constructively challenge management.
If you are an aspiring NED, a search-firm partner, a board advisor, or a senior executive building AI literacy, you are also in the right place.
Who is writing
I am Dharmash Mistry. Over the past two decades I have sat on more than thirty boards — from start-ups to multi-billion revenue businesses, public companies, private equity-backed firms, and government bodies, across eight countries.
Current roles: Premier League Board (Chair, Audit and Finance Committee), Football Association (Vice Chair), Halma plc (FTSE 100), Rathbones Group plc (FTSE 250, Chair of Remuneration). Prior board seats include: the BBC, the British Business Bank, the Competition and Markets Authority, Hargreaves Lansdown, and Dixons. I’m an investor and operator, most recently a Partner at leading VC firms Balderton & Lakestar (my investments include Revolut, Lovefilm, Glovo, Blockchain.com, Entrepreneur First). I have been fortunate to sit in every seat around the board table - Chair, CEO, NED, committee chair, Founder, Investor.
The build-and-teach project
The Directors Brief is also something else: a public experiment in building a low-cost, AI-powered content business from scratch (not the editorial but the processes) — and documenting every decision, tool, mistake, and milestone so that others can replicate it.
Free. Every Thursday.
If you sit on, advise, or aspire to join a board — and you want AI to be something you can govern with confidence rather than endure at arm’s length — subscribe below.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter, the frame & the Library
