Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesWHAT A PLEASURE it is to report this record-breaking statistic: The number of women named to corporate boards in the first quarter of 2009 reached 38% of all new appointments tracked in the DIRECTORS & BOARDS Directors Roster.
The Roster is our quarterly record of board appointments that we publish as a special feature in each edition of the journal. We launched this data tracking of director elections in 1994. It was then and remains today a unique mini-database of "Who's New" on public company boards. I like to tell colleagues that I got the idea to create the Roster because announcements of new board members were rarely reported in the media, even in the major business publications. At most, the New York Times or Wall Street Journal might infrequently run a line or two--"Executive A was named to the board of Company B." That was about it. Before the widespread adoption of the Internet it took a prodigious research effort to track down the appointments and assemble the data package. Even today, board appointments are rarely reported in the media, and company announcements of their director elections are often scantily detailed. So the rationale for a "data central" on new board members remains in place, and the research effort is still intense. Roster editor Kelly McCarthy is dogged in her data tracking. And we're pleased to have Heidrick & Struggles sponsoring this distinctive governance database.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Now, here is why that stat of 38% is so worthy of note. For the first decade of the Roster, from 1994 up until about 2002, the percentage of women named to boards typically averaged in the low teens. In 2002 we started to see a consistent uptick to the high teens. Could that have been an early reaction to the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, with the attendant push for independent directors and financial experts on boards? I say yes. From 2003-2006 the data veered widely, with some quarters backsliding to the low teens and other quarters hitting 20-25% of appointments. Year 2007 marked the first solid breakthrough trend: every quarter that year was above 20% for women directors. Same with 2008, when the average for the year was 25%. Now we have this big burst in the first quarter of 2009. Just flip through the Roster on pages 66 through 77 and you'll see this stat come alive. For me, a champion of board diversity since I showed up on the Directors & Boards doorstep in 1981, this stat is a sight to behold.
Speaking of sights, I have been seeing for several years Tupperware Brands CEO Rick Goings at Jeff Sonnen-feld's CEO Summits that Jeff runs for Yale School of Management. I'd listen to Rick's keen comments on leadership and think to myself, "This is someone I need to get into the pages of D&B so our readers can benefit from his perspective." It worked out for this edition, and I hope you enjoy the conversation that Publisher Bob Rock and I had with him. There is much more ahead in these pages, including the bonus insert of our Boardroom Briefing on Executive Compensation and Succession. And remember to come back next quarter to see if that awesome stat of newly elected women directors has legs.
FEED