The Part-time Job That Can Pay More Than $250,000 a Year

The people who sit on the boards of America’s largest corporations got a modest raise last year. Corporate directors at Fortune 500 companies saw a three percent increase in their total direct compensation for 2015, rising to a median $263,500, according to a new report from the advisory firm Willis Towers Watson. But over the past decade, the increase looks more substantial, rising a cumulative 65 percent since 2006, when median pay was just $160,000 — an annual rate of about five percent a year. That steady march upward, compensation experts say, reflects the expanding pressures on corporate directors, who must advise increasingly complex global corporations and take on much more risk in an environment with more rigorous governance standards.