---
title: "Meet Notion’s Board of Directors"
description: "Notion announces its first board of directors, comprising Jonathan Chadwick, Pat Grady, Gretchen Howard, Christopher Payne, and Patrick Hsu. The company says its early profitability allowed it to avoid placing investors on the board and instead select independent members. After a two-year search, the group was chosen to complement executive leadership across finance, operations, governance, investing, scaling, product, and research. Their backgrounds include technology-company financial discipline, market pattern-matching, operating and recruiting expertise, product growth, and research connecting biology with AI. Together, the directors offer experience from VMware, Sequoia, Robinhood, DoorDash, Arc Institute, Stanford, and other technology and research organizations described in the announcement, with perspectives on durable growth and ambitious teams."
---

# Meet Notion’s Board of Directors

[Notion](https://yomu.fyi/company/notion) · Ivan Zhao · Jun 8, 2026

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

Notion announces its first board of directors, comprising Jonathan Chadwick, Pat Grady, Gretchen Howard, Christopher Payne, and Patrick Hsu. The company says its early profitability allowed it to avoid placing investors on the board and instead select independent members. After a two-year search, the group was chosen to complement executive leadership across finance, operations, governance, investing, scaling, product, and research. Their backgrounds include technology-company financial discipline, market pattern-matching, operating and recruiting expertise, product growth, and research connecting biology with AI. Together, the directors offer experience from VMware, Sequoia, Robinhood, DoorDash, Arc Institute, Stanford, and other technology and research organizations described in the announcement, with perspectives on durable growth and ambitious teams.

## Context

Notion says its board-building process differed from that of many startups because the company was profitable early and was not required to bring investors onto its board. It wanted members whose expertise could supplement the skills of its executive leadership team at each stage of growth.

## Approach / What changed

Notion conducted a two-year search and selected five independent board members: Jonathan Chadwick, Pat Grady, Gretchen Howard, Christopher Payne, and Patrick Hsu. Their backgrounds span financial discipline, investing, operations, recruiting, product scaling, biology, AI, and research.

## Takeaways

- Jonathan Chadwick brings financial, operational, and governance experience from roles including CFO and COO of VMware and board work at Databricks and ServiceNow.
- Gretchen Howard’s experience scaling Robinhood and working at Google and CapitalG centers on operations, recruiting, customer experience, and strategy.
- Patrick Hsu adds experience spanning biology, AI, and research through Arc Institute, Stanford, and Thrive, with a focus on expanding people’s leverage against difficult problems.

**Tags:** [AI](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ai)

- Source: [Notion](https://www.notion.com/en-gb/blog/meet-notions-board-of-directors)
- Source URL: https://www.notion.com/en-gb/blog/meet-notions-board-of-directors
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-09T05:19:45.186Z

[Read original post](https://www.notion.com/en-gb/blog/meet-notions-board-of-directors)