Joe Curcillo
BOARD RETREAT KEYNOTE SPEAKER
A board retreat keynote and workshop for boards that keep having the same argument.
A board retreat keynote and workshop for boards that keep having the same argument.
Your board members are not difficult.
They are different.
Every board member walks into the retreat holding a different piece of the picture.
The treasurer sees risk.
The founder sees mission.
The newest member sees what nobody has said out loud.
The retreat goes sideways when those pieces never land on the same table.
That has a name: the Integration Gap™.
I help boards close it before the vote, not after.
For nonprofit and association boards
Board of directors retreats, board meetings that need a reset, and the session before a big decision.
I have served on fourteen boards, including as an association president and a foundation president, so I know the room from the inside.
Some of the boards I have served on.







Two ways to use me at your retreat
The Keynote
It opens the retreat. Why intelligent board members see the same decision differently, and the two questions that change a board discussion.
Your chair or facilitator runs the rest of the day.
I take the session you need.
The Workshop
Before the retreat, each board member takes the Hold the Horizon Leadership Assessment and gets a full report.
At the retreat, I run a facilitated workshop on your board’s own results, built on Hold the Horizon™: the five ways leaders respond to uncertainty (Explorer, Steward, Observer, Navigator and Bosun) and what happens when they sit at the same table.
Learning Objectives
Board members and executives will be able to:
- Explain why intelligent board members see the same decision differently.
- Recognize their own response to uncertainty, and the responses sitting next to them.
- Use two questions that change a board discussion.
- Keep the board on the future and management on execution.
Questions boards ask
Is this for a board retreat or a board meeting?
- Both. The keynote works as the opening of a retreat or as a focused session inside a regular board of directors meeting.
Do you facilitate the whole retreat?
- No. I take the session you need: the keynote, the workshop on your board’s assessment results, or both.
Is it for nonprofit boards?
- Yes. Volunteer boards are where different people with real authority most often talk past each other.
About Joe Curcillo
Forty-one years as a trial lawyer, where the job was getting experts to say plainly what they actually knew, in front of people who had to decide.
Forty-eight years on stage, where the whole act depends on knowing which person in the room is about to speak and which one is holding back.
Fourteen board and trustee seats. I have also been the one at the table trying to get a straight answer out of somebody else’s experts.

Let’s Talk About Your Association
Tell me what keeps coming back to your desk. Not the conference theme. The problem that gets stuck between your board, your staff and your committees, the one everyone assumes is someone else’s. That’s where I start.
I’ll hold your date for three business days while we talk. No pressure, no obligation.