Amanda K. Packel
Co-Executive Director, Rock Center for Corporate Governance
Co-Director, Stanford Directors’ College

Amanda is a corporate governance expert with unique insight into practical, emerging challenges facing corporate boards and the most critical issues on which institutional investors are focused. Since 2013, Amanda has been a leader of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, and she was promoted to Co-Executive Director in 2023.

Since 2015, Amanda has served as Co-Director and the lead operator for Stanford University’s Directors’ College, the nation’s oldest and most prominent education program for board members of publicly traded companies. Amanda oversees content planning, marketing strategy, price setting, budgeting, and selection of more than 80 outside speakers for this revenue-generating board governance program that attracts more than 250 registered attendees per year. In addition to Directors’ College, Amanda plans the content for other key Rock Center programs, including the Stanford Institutional Investors’ Forum, a semi-annual convening of corporate governance thought leaders from public pension funds, large asset managers, and Fortune 100 companies.

Amanda has published articles on board composition and has co-authored a law school textbook, Leadership for Lawyers. As a recognized expert on board refreshment, gender equity issues, and corporate governance, Amanda is frequently asked to speak on these topics to audiences of board members, business leaders, and academics. She has also served on the boards of directors of the Thirty Percent Coalition and the Silicon Valley Directors’ Exchange, and she is currently a member of the California Partners Project’s Women on Boards Advisory Council.

From 2008 to 2013, Amanda was the Executive Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University. She began her legal career practicing white-collar criminal defense and internal investigations as an attorney at Covington & Burling from 2002 to 2005, and at Orrick from 2005 to 2008. In addition to defending individuals in SEC enforcement actions and criminal investigations, Amanda represented audit committees conducting internal investigations and reviewing compliance programs in matters related to securities fraud, antitrust, and anti-corruption.

Amanda has a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Order of the Coif, and an A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, from Princeton University. She lives in Menlo Park, California, with her husband and two sons.

Key Works

Diversity on Corporate Boards: How Much “Difference” Does Difference Make?, 39 Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 377 (2014) (with Deborah L. Rhode)