Stanford University

Shareholders like their corporate boards stocked with independent directors—men and women unencumbered by close ties to the company or its executives.

After her fiance died suddenly, Patricia Galvin left New York for San Francisco in 1996 and took a job as a tax lawyer for a large law firm. A few years later, she began confiding to a psychologist at Stanford Hospital &Clinics about her relationships with family, friends and co-workers.