Dr Zella King

Zella is an Executive Fellow at Henley Business School and Co-Founder of The Personal Boardroom.  The Personal Boardroom is a highly practical tool that can help future leaders, talent cohorts and minority groups build a more effective network that will make them visible, propel them forward in their careers and equip them to get things done. It has been used in many well-known companies including Accenture, Allied Irish Bank, BBC, Dyson, EY, Google, Linklaters, RBS, Severn Trent and UBS.

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Drawing on insights from academic research, Zella challenges leaders on the diversity of people they surround themselves with. She argues that, in order to lead innovation or respond to disruption, leaders need a “personal boardroom” that includes people outside their company and outside their comfort zone. She introduces 12 roles that personal boardroom members play to help a leader succeed.  The Personal Boardroom approach has been used by companies to develop leaders and accelerate women into senior roles. 

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Before creating Personal Boardroom with executive coach Amanda Scott, Zella was a business school professor at Henley Business School. Her research on career management and networks has been published in top academic journals. Zella’s book, Who is in your Personal Boardroom? How to choose people, assign roles and have conversations with purpose, written with Amanda Scott, was published in 2014.

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Zella has delivered keynote speeches for numerous clients including the BBC, BNY Mellon, Cisco, CYBG, Dyson, Eli Lilly, Google, Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS. She gave a TEDx talk on the science of social networks to a youth audience in 2011.