Company: ACHV
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000950170-25-059297
Chunk: 19

Company: ACHIEVE LIFE SCIENCES, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 19
---
 matters of the Company, while Mr. King led the Board and partnered with Mr. Stewart on key strategic matters best enabled the company to progress its corporate goals and provide strategic focus and oversight during the Chief Executive Officer transition. Effective upon the Annual Meeting, the Board believes that it is the appropriate time for Mr. King to fully transition the day-to-day operational and strategic matters to Mr. Stewart, which allows Mr. King to provide independent leadership to the Board and oversight over management and strategic matters. Independent directors and management sometimes have different perspectives and roles in strategy development. Our independent directors bring experience, oversight and expertise from outside of our Company. The Board of Directors also believes the separation of the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer roles allows the Chief Executive Officer to focus his time and energy on operating and managing the Company and leverages the Chairman’s experience and perspective.

Lead Independent Director

Thomas King served as our lead independent director from June 2023 to August 2024 and will assume the position of independent Chairman of the Board following his service as our Interim Executive Chairman, effective upon the Annual Meeting. This independent oversight provides an additional measure of balance and enhances the Board’s ability to fulfill its management oversight responsibilities. As independent Chairman of the Board, Mr. King, among other responsibilities, will develop, along with the Chief Executive Officer, the agenda for each Board meeting, preside over regularly scheduled meetings at which only our independent directors are present, serves as a liaison between the Chief Executive Officer and the independent directors and perform such additional duties as our Board of Directors may otherwise determine and delegate.

Consistent with our leadership structure, our management is charged with the day-to-day management of risks that we face or may face and provides our Board of Directors with quarterly risk assessment and mitigation strategy updates, while our Board of Directors and its committees are responsible for oversight of risk management. The Audit Committee has responsibility for oversight of financial reporting related risks, including those related to our accounting, auditing and financial reporting practices, as well as cybersecurity risks. In addition, the Audit Committee annually reviews and assesses the adequacy of our risk management policies and procedures with regard to identifying our management of financial risks, cybersecurity risks, reviews the quarterly updates on these risks that are received from management, and assesses the adequacy of management’s implementation of appropriate systems to mitigate and manage financial risks. Furthermore, under our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, the Audit Committee is responsible for considering reports of conflicts of interest involving officers and directors. The Nominating and Governance Committee oversees corporate governance risks