Sarah Davis has had a career that resists easy summary. A lawyer by training, she has worked across media, publishing and the third sector, and currently sits on the boards of UNICEF UK, ICRA the International Catalogue Raisonné Association, and the Women’s Prize Trust. She is also a Client Legal Director at TLD. We caught up with her to talk about how she got into non-executive work, what she’s learned along the way, and why lawyers are better placed for board roles than they’re often given credit for. 

How did you first get into non-executive work? 

I’d been involved with various arts and cultural organisations for years but I joined the board of UNICEF UK in 2017. I was approached by an external search firm that specialised in third sector appointments, and if you’re interested in that world, it’s worth knowing that there are dedicated executive search firms who work specifically in that space, alongside the larger generalist firms. 

I suspect my background at The Guardian was part of what brought me to their attention, but I honestly don’t know. What I would say is that being on a charity board is a really good route into corporate non-exec work, because some of your fellow trustees will also be on paid boards. You’re building your NED network even while you’re doing something entirely voluntary. 

And the Women’s Prize Trust, how did that come about? 

That one came through a personal connection. I used to chair a spoken word poetry charity called Poet in the City, and a literary giant, a woman called Lennie Goodings, joined our board. Lennie had been one of the founders of Virago Press and a champion of the Women’s Prize from the outset. Now chair of Virago Press, Lennie was the first person to publish Maya Angelou in the UK, back in the 1980s. Just an incredibly interesting person to have in your orbit. 

When I left that board, I wanted to do something else in the arts and literary world. I’m a reader, so it felt natural. Lennie suggested me to the chair of the Women’s Prize, they were looking for someone with a legal and charity background. I went through the process of being interviewed by some of the most formidable women in publishing. That’s how it happened. 

What’s your advice for lawyers who want to pursue NED roles? 

The first thing is: do it for something you genuinely love. Charity trustee roles are unpaid, and your time is precious, so you have to really care about it. You don’t want to be rushing your board papers at the last minute because it feels like an obligation. You’re committing your time because you support what the organisation wants to do. 

The second thing is that there’s still a perception in some quarters that lawyers don’t make good non-exec directors, that they can’t bring breadth to a board role, that they find it hard to move outside their executive function. I think that criticism has some validity for certain kinds of lawyers, but it really doesn’t apply to in-house lawyers. If you’ve operated as a General Counsel, you’ve already had to think  strategically, across the whole organisation and use your judgement as much as your expertise. That’s exactly the experience boards are looking for, and it’s a case worth making to executive search firms. 

The other thing lawyers bring, which people don’t always appreciate, is a lack of fear of officialdom, we are familiar with it. For a lot of people, particularly in creative organisations, a formal letter is genuinely intimidating. For a lawyer receiving a nine-page letter from a firm threatening proceedings, by the time you can get to the last paragraph you usually have an idea of whether they really want to sue, or whether they’re just putting you on notice or wanting to open a negotiation. That can be incredibly calming for your fellow trustees. 

You’re also a trustee of UNICEF UK, which means you’re involved in Soccer Aid. Tell us about that. 

Soccer Aid is UNICEF UK’s flagship fundraising event. It goes out on ITV who are the broadcast partner and in a single day we raise extraordinary amounts of money for children. Whatever you might think of Robbie Williams, he came up with the idea and made it happen twenty years ago. Over that time, Soccer Aid has raised more than 130 million pounds for UNICEF. That has led to genuinely life-changing impact at scale for millions of children. He deserves enormous credit for it. 

There’s this brilliant week in June where Soccer Aid falls on the Sunday, and then during the week it’s the Women’s Prize awards. Two things I care about enormously, back-to-back. 

The Women’s Prize has just celebrated its 31st year. How did it come about originally? 

The author and co-founder of The Women’s Prize, Kate Mosse, tells an incredible story about this. There had been a Booker Prize longlist that was entirely male authors. Which is fine, but Kate noticed that very few people, including those in publishing noticed. She felt that wasn’t good enough, and the Women’s Prize was hers and some others, courageous response to it. 

The gender bias in reading is extraordinary, actually. Women read women and men. We grow up doing it, we don’t even notice. Men read men, and if they read women, it tends to be The Handmaid’s Tale. One of the initiatives the Prize ran was about getting men to read women writers. We had Stanley Tucci front it, which helped, not least because he’s Stanley Tucci.  

Finally, what would you say to a TLD lawyer who’s curious about non-exec work but doesn’t know where to start? 

Start with something you love. Look at the dedicated third sector executive search firms: they exist and they’re a genuine route in. And don’t undersell your experience as an in-house lawyer. The breadth is there. The commercial instinct is there. The ability to stay calm when things get legally complicated is there. Those are exactly the things boards need, and not everyone on a board has them.