Wide-Angle Leadership: Why diverse, cross-sector boards shape better decisions

My story begins in inner-city Birmingham, where I arrived from the Punjab, undocumented and not enrolled in school due to cultural expectations that girls didn’t need formal education. I was raised in a working-class migrant household, alongside Caribbean families from the Windrush generation. My father worked long hours on building sites, with little recognition from the society he was helping to rebuild.

When I finally entered school, I couldn’t speak English. Still, I quickly learned, fell in love with books, and became the first from the huge comprehensive to attend university, securing an unconditional offer to Oxford.

At Oxford, it was hard to feel I fully belonged. But this outsider perspective became my strength. It taught me to navigate complex systems, remain grounded in community insight, and ask uncomfortable questions that others might overlook. My early experiences have shaped a career defined by public service, cross-sector innovation, and inclusive growth. I bring a 360-degree view of how services land with people, especially those whose voices are least heard.

Across my board portfolio - from NHS trusts and innovation catapults to regeneration bodies and regulated utilities - I’ve drawn on this experience to challenge siloed thinking, champion fairness, and steward public value. I know what it means to build trust because I know what it feels like when trust is absent.

"The UK’s long-term growth depends on decisions made in boardrooms. But the best boardrooms aren’t echo chambers; they’re engines of imagination, integrity, and inclusion."

Sukhvinder Kaur-Stubbus

Chair, Independent Customer Scrutiny Group, Thames Water | Board Member, Regulator of Social Housing & RICS Standards Board | Governance & Strategy Advisor

What cross-sector leaders bring to the boardroom

The UK’s long-term growth goals, from decarbonisation and levelling up to AI, skills, and infrastructure, are deeply interconnected. They span policy domains and sectors, demanding complex trade-offs and fresh thinking. Diverse, cross-sector boards are not just helpful, they’re essential to navigate this landscape with credibility and foresight.

Boards made up of leaders from housing, health, infrastructure, finance, and technology, all sectors I’ve worked in, create richer dialogue, better challenges, and more resilient decisions. They bring systems thinking, not siloed assumptions.

Disruption reveals the danger of groupthink. Cross-sector board members bring challenge; they question assumptions, draw on different regulatory and business environments, and stress-test decisions in ways that homogenous boards cannot.

At Thames Water, I chair the Independent Customer Challenge Group, made up of members from finance, civil society, media and Parliament. We helped the board rethink its approach to customer vulnerability and trust. Instead of ticking compliance boxes, we urged them to reframe their social contract. This drove the development of new social tariffs and better debt management. In a business under intense pressure, these changes won praise from Ofwat and financially vulnerable customers.

 Representation isn’t enough; inclusion unlocks true value

Diversity isn’t only about sectors. Back in the early 2000s, census data revealed a significant rise in mixed marriages. I predicted this would soon be reflected in advertising, and now, mixed heritage families are front and centre of campaigns selling everything from holidays to household products. Why? Because that’s who we sell to and serve.

Yet this shift didn’t happen by accident. It was intentional. The same must be true of board diversity. Traditional recruitment processes align with the majority's experience. To shift this, organisations must acknowledge bias and dismantle structural barriers, in the same way we are now demanding fairness in AI.

Boards that include people from under-represented groups, whether defined by ethnicity, disability, sexuality, socio-economic background or neurodiversity, send a powerful signal that the organisation is honest, forward-thinking, and acts with integrity.

On one of my NHS Trusts, governors insisted we appoint ‘local people.’ While rooted in a commitment to community, this inadvertently narrowed the talent pool in a predominantly affluent, homogenous area. Yet our patients came from across London. I created ‘associate’ roles to fill skill gaps, deliberately looking beyond postcode, which brought new expertise and greater challenge into the room.

But recruitment alone isn’t enough. Inclusion is what unlocks value. I’ve seen real success where boards invest in mentoring, onboarding, and culture. The best chairs don’t just “host” diverse voices; they draw them out and act on what they hear.

 Lasting growth demands clarity, courage and diversity of thought

This isn’t a binary choice between commercial sustainability and public value. It’s about clarity of purpose and embracing creative tension.

Boards that get this right don’t just measure success in financial metrics. They think long-term: about trust, environmental sustainability, and social legitimacy. These are fast becoming core to enduring value creation.

At the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), our board included voices from sport, community activism, engineering, property, and finance. That breadth shaped decisions on land value, legacy use, and climate resilience. We made trade-offs with eyes open, balancing commercial drivers with community expectations. Diverse thinking helped guard against short-termism and unchecked financial optimism.

One gap we identified at the LLDC was the absence of younger voices. We supported a youth forum that had been active during the Olympics and involved them in our design and planning decisions. That group evolved into "Elevate”, winning external funding and building its own leadership. We later recruited one of its founders onto the board. She has brought rigour and fresh challenge and helped shift how the Executive thinks about engagement.

More broadly, I’ve found that structured board reflection, through stakeholder sessions, scenario planning, or values-based discussions, helps boards step back from business-as-usual and lean into complexity with confidence.

The future of board leadership: Thinking widely, leading boldly

Boardrooms need to get serious about future readiness.

That means elevating lived experience alongside technical skill, treating inclusion as a core strategic strength, and making cross-sector collaboration routine, not exceptional.

We must move from representation to participation, where leaders who bring a different lived experience shape the agenda, not just respond to it. The best boardrooms are crucibles of challenge, cohesion, and insight. They are places where bold ideas are tested, trade-offs debated, and complex risks tackled with a wide-angle lens.

If the Industrial Strategy is to achieve long-term competitiveness and transformation, UK boardrooms must become engines of imagination, integrity, and inclusion.