For instance, when Ford Motor Co. announced that Mark Field would succeed Allan Mulally as CEO, Ford's spokeswoman mentioned that the "company takes succession planning very seriously and has succession plans in place for each of the key leadership positions. However, for competitive reasons, Ford does not discuss succession plans externally." We overcome the lack of publicly available detail in succession planning by using a comprehensive and hand-collected dataset with unplanned CEO departures and offer a glimpse of the role board members can play in facilitating successful succession.