Samantha Kappagoda was invited to participate as a panelist at the BoardProspects webinar AI Governance Principles for Boards on Friday, July 10, 2026, alongside Per Edin, Principal, Advisory at KPMG USA and Anne Zavarella, co-leader of the KPMG Board Leadership Center. The discussion was grounded in the 2026 document KPMG/INSEAD AI Governance Principles for Boards, for which Samantha served as an Advisory Council member and to which Per and Anne also contributed.
Samantha Kappagoda’s Contribution at the BoardProspects Webinar
Samantha’s contribution to this BoardProspects webinar drew on her operating experience as Chief Data Scientist at Numerati® Partners with active board service as Independent Director, Nominating & Governance Committee Chair and Audit Committee Member at Credit Suisse Funds and as a Board Member of the Governing Council Business Board at the University of Toronto.
Her observations centered on Principle 5, The Work of the Board:
- On board composition and engagement: Samantha asked whether board capability to engage substantively with AI oversight has kept pace with the technology, or whether the same director is still asking every AI question.
- On board meeting cadence: she observed that quarterly board meetings were designed for environments with slow-moving operational risk and that boards have to decide what should be addressed at quarterly meetings and what may require discussion in between.
- On enterprise risk management: she asked if boards were discussing whether their company’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach had been created for a development environment that includes agentic AI, where risk can compound and propagate faster than the controls that were designed to catch it.
- On the regulatory landscape: she observed that AI and privacy regulations are fragmented across jurisdictions and that directors would have to consider the complexity of that patchwork quilt, what applies for their companies and where there might be risks associated with divergence.
In addition to her role for the KPMG/INSEAD AI Governance Principles for Boards, Samantha participated on the panel AI Governance and Guardrails at the KPMG Board Leadership Conference in March 2026.
About Samantha Kappagoda
Samantha Kappagoda is a board director and technology strategist who brings a distinctive blend of capital markets judgment, AI governance and data strategy expertise to complex, regulated environments. Her boardroom perspective leverages her operating experience — in data, analytics and technology — to navigate emerging opportunities, drive value and mitigate risk.
Samantha currently serves as Board Director, Nominating & Governance Committee Chair and Audit Committee Member at the Credit Suisse Funds, now under UBS (NYSE: UBS), and a Board Member of the Governing Council Business Board at the University of Toronto. She also serves as Chief Data Scientist and Co-Founder of Numerati® Partners LLC, a RiskTech firm, and Visiting Scholar/Academic at Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing and Data Science at New York University.
Recognized by the Financial Times as a Future 50 Director, and a Director to Watch by Directors & Boards magazine, Samantha is the author of Board Governance of AI and Emerging Technologies and Do Boards Need “AI Expert” Directors?, both in Directors & Boards, and a contributor to NACD Director Essentials: Implementing AI Governance. Samantha also serves as an Advisory Council member for the KPMG/INSEAD AI Governance Principles for Boards published in 2026, contributing to a global principles-based approach developed with board members, investors, operators and governance specialists across the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Samantha is an active contributor at governance forums in USA, Canada and UK, addressing AI and data governance, cybersecurity, financial markets and global macroeconomic trends. She has served as faculty at NYU Directors’ Academy, NACD Master Class on Technology and Innovation Oversight and Diligent Institute. Samantha has been an invited panelist at conferences including Character of the Corporation, Corporate Board Member, Financial Times Outstanding Directors Exchange, Independent Directors Council, Institute of Directors UK, KPMG Board Leadership Conference and NACD Summit. She has earned the DCRO Institute Certificate in Risk Governance®, Certificate in Private Company Governance from the Private Directors Association, and has also completed the Harvard Business School Program Making Corporate Boards More Effective. For additional information, please see Samantha’s biography, recent news and conferences.
