Register of open board seats
The empty seat in the governing table.
A board seat is not a chair for rent. It is a formal place inside an organisation's governing machinery: access to the information, a vote on what is approved, a hand in who is appointed, and responsibility for the quality of the decisions that follow. OpenChair lists those places openly, so that they are filled on merit rather than acquaintance.
- 8
- Open seats
- 4
- Seat types
- 6
- Countries
- 5
- Sectors
Why seats exist
Three beats of the governing seat
01 · Antiquity — 15th c.
The council
Towns, guilds, universities and churches governed by councils long before anyone owned shares. A seat meant the right to be present when the decision was made, and the duty to answer for it afterwards.
02 · circa 1600
The joint-stock seat
Chartered companies turned the seat into property of a constituency. The English East India Company seated a Court of 24 Directors; the Dutch VOC seated the Heeren XVII — seventeen places allocated by chamber, eight to Amsterdam, four to Zeeland. Seats negotiated power between investors.
03 · 1870s — 1995
The two-tier check
The German Aufsichtsrat became mandatory for joint-stock companies in the 1870s: supervision written into the constitution rather than left to the state. Estonia's Commercial Code adopted the form on 1 September 1995 as the nõukogu.
The two-tier form
Shareholders → nõukogu → juhatus
In Estonia and Germany, supervision is a separate body rather than a committee of the same table. The nõukogu appoints and observes the juhatus, and approves what falls outside ordinary business. Its members owe diligence to the legal person — not to the shareholder who nominated them. That distinction is what makes a seat a check rather than a courtesy.
- Shareholders
- Elect the supervisory board. They own; they do not manage. ↓ elect
- Nõukogu · Aufsichtsrat
- Supervisory board. Appoints and observes the executive; approves the decisions that bind the company. ↓ appoint & supervise
- Juhatus · Vorstand
- Management board. Runs the business day to day and answers upward.
Currently open
Seats put forward this month
01Nonprofit trustee
Trustee, Finance & Risk
Baltic Climate Foundation
A grant-making foundation deploying EUR 14m across Baltic decarbonisation seeks a trustee to chair its finance and risk committee.
02Corporate NED
Non-Executive Director
Vireo Health Systems
Scale-up clinical software provider preparing for a Nasdaq First North listing seeks an independent NED with regulated-market experience.
03Nonprofit trustee
Board Member, Programming
Kanuti Contemporary Arts
An independent performing arts house seeks a board member to steward artistic programming and audience development.