Safety culture "Board-C-Suite Disagree" Annunciator
Disclaimer 1st: the boards I've advised directly, and those whose affairs I've sometimes followed, don't compare at all to Boeing (and there's no claim even implied in what follows, otherwise).
Boardroom changes in the weather can happen quite rapidly. While top management is structured in linear hierarchies and linear arrays, a board of directors (or college trustees) is structured as a cohort. While there are gradations around seniority, the most potent force for understanding how directors manuever is how well they intuitively account for the views of - as well as questions held by - the directors as a whole.
Of course group dynamics gets into political games, personalities matter, and so on.
But as almost a forecast, this new board member isn't going to sit quietly and see what happens. Expect to see instead stridently pro-active moves to shorten that distance from board actions to the design and plane-building realms.
Throw the optics label if it suits you; Boeing very obviously created the mess it's in (with help from FAA, yes, and the Congress, and....). But count one attorney who keeps at least a few seats in one row of the mind open, as after all, do any of us have anything like the responsibilities of the U.S. Navy CNO on our c.v.s.?