Today’s trend in corporate governance is creating a diverse Board of Directors that not only breaks the Caucasian male stereotype, but also moves the corporation toward greater success. Regardless of how accomplished a board is, to be effective, it also must be diverse. Many more companies need to diversify for the purpose of strengthening their company boards.
In January 2020, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced it would no longer accept initial public offerings from U.S. or European companies that do not have at least one female or diverse director. A California law imposes a minimum number of minority directors on companies headquartered in the state. Nasdaq is actively working to address and create requirements for board diversity in their listing companies. Bloomberg has also reported, many investment firms are also refusing to work with companies that do not have a female director.
Having a diverse board is not only becoming more of a requirement year after year, but also is good business practice. Why? Nasdaq cites research showing the benefits of board diversity, from higher-quality financial disclosures to the lower likelihood of audit problems. “Diversity of the board is an important element in providing investors’ confidence in the future sustainability of the company.” Women currently drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing. Addressing diversity and inclusion in your boards will help meet the needs of the consumers and drive profitability.
Perhaps the largest reason that companies give for not having a diverse Board of Directors already is that they claim they cannot find qualified women and diverse males.
In the 2019 Study of Gender Diversity in Private Company Boardrooms, which Crunchbase coauthored with Him for Her and the Kellogg School of Management, of the 200 highly funded private companies studied, only 7% of board seats were held by women. Sixty percent of the companies had no female board members at all. The pool of females with past board experience is low. Therefore, a very high percentage of female board directors are first-time board directors, especially for private companies, because there’s just not enough of a pool of women board members. With the increased desire and requirements for a diverse board, the task of finding qualified and available women will only become more difficult.
This is where we come in.
Why choose CEO Search Partners to help you diversify your board:
- As a certified woman owned business with over 25 years specializing in Food and Consumer Industry Executive Search, our network of diversity executives in the Industries we practice is vast and growing daily. We are skilled and practiced at finding proven fresh talent for board roles in high growth organizations, Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge funds, Family office, Family owned, Fortune 500 and public companies.
- We can bring you fresh talent from exciting new areas we are working in such as Better-for-You, and D2C.
- Our firm has outstanding top-to-top relationships in our core businesses, and we are viewed as the top industry insider.
- We are uniquely networked and recognized as an active participant in our industry. We are the only search firm globally belonging to 34 industry related associations. We host top industry Presidents and CEO dinners, and board dinners. We participate in 22 major conferences per year, giving us strong personal relationships across the industry.
- We are the leading industry experts who have filled over 800 searches in significantly shorter time frames then our competition. Our focus is Boards of Directors, CEOs, Presidents, and other C-Suite Functions, including Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, Finance, R&D, and HR. Because of this we have significant access to the best talent across the industries we practice in.
Reach out to our CEO, Robin Copping at (773) 251-6240 or by email to find out more about how we can help you diversify your board.