Private Company Director’s Directors to Watch 2026 highlights 29 significant and diverse directors who have contributed to and will continue to expand ongoing dialogue on board best practices and corporate governance excellence.
Edna Conway
Long Ridge Equity Partners, Active Cypher, Praetorian Security, Ripjar
Edna Conway, an innovative director and global C-suite leader, drives strategies for resilient and secure operating models in the digital economy. With more than 40 years of leadership experience, including chief security and risk officer roles at $245 billion technology companies, such as Microsoft and Cisco, she developed award-winning security architectures, protected billions in revenue and enhanced compliance.
Conway led due diligence for more than 60 M&A and divestiture deals upwards of $7 billion. She has chaired or served on more than 12 boards across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, achieving successful exits and, where needed, restructuring. She is a member of the boards of Active Cypher, Praetorian Security, Ripjar and Gallaudet University. Her insights are featured in leading publications, such as Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, and she has spoken at Presidential commissions, NATO, the Hague and the United Nations.
Conway is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Private Directors Association, Extraordinary Women on Boards and Athena Alliance.
Humble curiosity, stronger boards. “Strive to create a governance operating model that builds synergistic architectures aligning disparate workforce skills, cultures, director expertise and approaches that encourage innovative practices aimed at building business resilience. Build consensus via affirmative outreach to the CEO, other senior leaders and each director across their spectrum of executive, investor or independent member lenses. Relentlessly learn the business’s strengths, challenges, and ever-changing competitive and customer landscape to yield key individual and collective insights. Leverage humble curiosity to lay bare the company’s potential for and barriers to resilient growth, and consistently demonstrate and seek accountability to guide progress with agility and clarity.”