The roles and responsibilities of executive directors on boards are given scant literature attention in comparison to their non-executive counterparts, and potential professional roles and responsibilities receive minimal review or mention even in the light of a growing focus on ethical behaviour and advocacy for directors to take personal responsibility. The professional roles and responsibilities of human resource and marketing directors are the focus of investigation in this paper. Could these roles and responsibilities lead these directors to become representative of other stakeholder groups or, indeed, are they relevant? A mix of desk and empirical research is used to explore these questions and implications for practice developed. The roles and responsibilities would appear relevant but are at a nascent stage of development and the likely pressure for adoption would appear to be external to the board.