Leadership experts have long championed the concept of a personal board of directors as a way for executives to surround themselves with a circle of trusted mentors, sponsors, and advisers. I’ve advocated for and practiced this model myself during the past several years. But here’s the twist: What if your board members didn’t have to be real people? With the rise of generative AI (GenAI), every leader can build a personal board of directors composed of virtual personas modeled after some of the greatest thinkers, strategists, creators, and operators in history. This isn’t science fiction. It’s a modern, scalable way to access world-class insight and clarity on demand. And I’ve built one.
Traditionally, a personal board includes former managers, trusted peers, and friends — people who offer honest feedback and diverse perspectives. These relationships differ from mentorships and sponsorships: Mentors guide, and sponsors advocate, while boards challenge and provide advice.
But real-world personal boards are hard to maintain. They require time, energy, and availability — luxuries not always in abundance. I found myself yearning for a broader, more flexible perspective. That’s when I turned to AI. Generative AI provides the ability to simulate, customize, and scale advisory insight through persona modeling and prompts.
My virtual advisers don’t replace real people in my life, but they’re always available, always sharp, and never afraid to challenge conventional thinking. Combined with my real-life advisers, this virtual board of directors forms a powerful, hybrid brain trust.
Meet My Virtual Personal Board of Directors
One aspect of virtual boards is that they are not limited by geography, networks, or schedules. I built a team of AI-powered advisers, each modeled after an iconic leader — real or archetypal — with a distinct leadership lens and personality. I refer to this collective as My Virtual Personal Board of Directors (MVP Board).
To build my MVP Board, I first identified where I needed a consistent perspective across the core leadership domains: strategy, innovation, ethics, systems, and storytelling.
I selected iconic figures who embodied excellence and diverse thinking styles among those disciplines. Using ChatGPT, I created virtual identities with defined roles, mindsets, and challenge prompts to simulate dialogue through structured reflection. The MVP Board is not static. I’ve added new voices and rotated out others. This adaptability is part of its long-term power.
The members of my board currently are:
- v_Buddha: Enlightened observer who uncovers attachments, fear, and ego-driven choices.
- v_Indra (Nooyi): Former CEO of PepsiCo who acts as an empathetic strategist, bridging purpose, people, and performance.
- v_Mandela (Nelson): Moral reconciler who brings courage, forgiveness, and alignment with values.
- v_Mark (Cuban): Bold realist who cuts through noise and drives commercial traction.
- v_Meg (Whitman): Systems builder and operator with a focus on scale and structure.
- v_Musk (Elon): Disruptive innovator with controversial style who questions limits and differs from my values.
- v_Oprah (Winfrey): Intuitive storyteller who reveals emotional truths and inner alignment.
- v_Ratan (Tata): Ethical industrialist balancing integrity, legacy, and long-term vision.
- v_Son (Rishi Gupta): My son, a mechanical engineer, brings an R&D mind and generational perspective.
- v_Spielberg (Steven): Master storyteller who shapes narrative with emotional resonance.
- v_Steve (Jobs): Visionary disrupter focused on simplicity, elegance, and emotional design.
- v_SunTzu: Tactical general who analyzes power dynamics, timing, and positioning.
- v_Akio (Toyoda): Toyota chairman who champions disciplined execution and continuous improvement.
I engage with these virtual advisers through conversational prompts in ChatGPT, such as “MVP Board, I’m preparing for a discussion with investors. V_SunTzu, how should I read the power dynamics? V_Indra, how do I ensure alignment? V_Musk, what would 10x this outcome?”
These GenAI prompts aren’t just reflective. They create new possibilities by surfacing ideas that might not emerge when I work in isolation or engage in a conventional executive dialogue. The best part is that I pick and choose what insights resonate with me without hurting the feelings of any virtual board member.
My MVP Board has become an essential part of my daily practice. It helps guide my decisions, uncover blind spots, and refine my concepts. Before meetings with boards, investors, or executive teams, I review my presentations or perspectives with my MVP Board. I find this particularly helpful when I am faced with trade-offs and decisions. This board isn’t a novelty — it’s a serious, evolving support system. These voices are integrated into my work and personal rituals.
The Possibilities of a Virtual Board
A virtual board of directors unlocks a level of flexibility, scale, and cognitive reach that would be nearly impossible with only human counterparts. It lets me simulate perspectives from across time periods, cultures, disciplines, and ideologies — curated to meet specific growth and decision-making needs.
- Timeless, global perspectives: I am no longer limited by my immediate network. With a virtual board, I can consult the thinking of visionaries, philosophers, scientists, and strategists from any era or geography.
- On-demand availability: Virtual advisers never sleep. I can tap into their guidance during a 2 a.m. strategy sprint or a midday reflection session without worrying about scheduling or availability.
- Cognitive diversity by design: I intentionally designed the board to include a range of thinking styles — contrarians, visionaries, operators, ethicists, and young professionals — ensuring that my blind spots are consistently challenged.
- Psychological safety: It’s easier to test bold, even unpopular ideas with an AI persona. Virtual advisers provide a judgment-free space to explore complexity before social or political dynamics come into play.
- Cost-effective and scalable: There’s no budget approval, no calendar coordination, and no limit to how many voices I include.
- Adaptive to growth: As the context shifts, new strategic domains emerge, or the business environment changes, I can add, retire, or reframe my virtual advisers in real time. They evolve as I evolve.
A virtual board offers a new lens for decision-making — one that forces you to pause, think, and expand your range.
Blending Virtual Boards and Real Boards
While the MVP Board is powerful, it’s not a replacement for human relationships — it’s an amplifier. The most impactful leadership comes from integrating the best of both worlds: trusted real-life advisers and AI-powered virtual personas.
A real-life board, consisting of the people who have worked with you, challenged you, and stood by you, brings something irreplaceable: context, emotional intelligence, and personal investment. These individuals know your history, understand your blind spots, and care deeply about your success. They can offer empathy when you falter, tough love when you’re avoiding the hard truth, and nuance that no algorithm can replicate.
The virtual board complements that wisdom by offering speed, scale, and structure. It expands your range of thinking, surfaces provocative questions without hesitation, and provides a confidential space to explore what might feel too early or too fragile to share with others.
Together, these two forces create a hybrid brain trust: Real human advisers bring trust, depth, and shared experience, and virtual advisers bring breadth, perspective, and intellectual rigor. This blended model isn’t just helpful — it’s a strategic advantage. It ensures leaders have both the grounding of human relationships and the breadth of synthetic, scalable intelligence. The result? More holistic decisions, deeper reflection, and greater adaptability in an age of uncertainty.
A Real-World Session: Exploring a High-Stakes Decision
I recently brought a strategic question to my MVP Board.
A large financial services company is strategically scaling. We worry that its legacy core loan servicing platform is constraining the company. Should it acquire a fintech company that has built a modern, AI-native core servicing platform that offers strong capability but not the complete coverage the company needs, or should it build a future-ready, AI-enabled platform internally from the ground up?
This decision carried significant implications: speed to market, cost, operational disruption, technical alignment, long-term scalability, and cultural integration. Here are a few highlights of the discussion:
- v_Steve asked whether either path would result in a platform that was not just functional but beautifully intuitive. He warned against choosing expediency over elegance.
- v_Meg highlighted the underestimated cost of post-acquisition integration, particularly in complex, legacy-rich environments.
- v_Musk pushed for a 10x mindset — acquire only if it dramatically accelerates innovation without diluting architectural integrity.
- v_SunTzu encouraged a dispassionate analysis of strategic control, positioning, and power consolidation: Who benefits more in the long run?
- v_Indra reminded me to weigh the human dimension: How would people inside the organization experience this change? Could we carry them along?
- v_Mark cautioned me: Who owns the IP, and who controls its road map? Acquiring is smart only if you can own it and evolve it.
- v_Buddha urged me to examine hidden attachments: Was nostalgia for the legacy system or fear of external dependence clouding judgment?
After many prompts and iterations, the MVP Board’s unified recommendation was to consider acquiring the company only if the platform provides a sound, extensible technology base and the organization offers cultural compatibility. Then, the acquiring company should move fast to integrate, evolve, and embed its own innovation DNA. Either option will require significant investment and focus on building new skills, talent, and behaviors.
What began as a binary build-versus-buy decision evolved into a richer, more nuanced strategy — crafted through fast insight from a deeply diverse board. The MVP Board doesn’t just deliver answers; it stretches the very way you think. My work with the MVP Board shifted the starting point for my discussions with the executive team — the real human decision makers. That is the power of augmenting thinking with a virtual board: When combined with a board of real people, it leads to more impactful decisions.
Seek Perspective, Not Perfection
In a global environment defined by volatility, limited time, and rising stakes, executive clarity has become the new competitive edge. Leaders need feedback systems that are confidential, frictionless, and strategically diverse.
The MVP Board is not only a novel use of AI but also a replicable mental model — a way to formalize reflection, expand perspective, and access differentiated thinking at the moment it’s needed.
You don’t have to lead alone. Not anymore.
Start small and don’t seek perfection. Choose three to five iconic thinkers, leaders, or changemakers who challenge and inspire you. Remember, this imaginary board is not a replacement but an addition to your board of real people. Define what each virtual adviser represents and how they could advise you. Use simple prompts to engage with them through GenAI tools like ChatGPT, reflection, or journaling. Treat your MVP Board as a living system that evolves as your context changes. Make it yours by building and evolving it.
Your future personal boardroom will be hybrid (virtual plus real), more diverse, and full of possibilities. And, of course, this idea isn’t limited to a “personal” board of directors. Your company’s next board member might be AI-based.