Sylvia Acevedo, Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA; Board Member, Qualcomm,
Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO, Him for Her,
Olivia Morgan, Co-founder and Board Chair, California Partners Project
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Reaching Gender Parity On Boards 

Conferences

Sylvia Acevedo, Girl Scouts of the USA
Jocelyn Mangan, Him for Her 
Olivia Morgan, California Partners Project
Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

Sylvia Acevedo, Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA; Board Member, Qualcomm
Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO, Him for Her 
Olivia Morgan, Co-founder and Board Chair, California Partners Project
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

Sylvia Acevedo, Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA
Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO, Him for Her 
Olivia Morgan, Co-founder and Board Chair, California Partners Project
Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

In 2018, California was the first state to pass a law requiring publicly traded companies to have at least one female board member. And in 2021 NASDAQ announced that they would require listed companies to have at least two board members who are women and come from or come from another underrepresented group. While we did see progress made on boards in California with the number of companies with no female members dropping from 28% to 1%. Last year. The state court overturned the law with all of the economic uncertainty. Right now. Many fear that female leadership could stall today. We'll hear from board leaders and advocates on the importance of diversity on boards and how we as leaders can advocate for change to discuss how we can continue to make progress on corporate boards. I'd like to welcome Jocelyn Mangan founder and CEO of him for her and board member for Papa Johns International Wag Labs and Chow now Sylvia Oso, former CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA and board member at Rito and Qualcomm and Olivia Morgan co-founder and board chair for the California Partner project. They'll be interviewed by Fortune's executive editor Lindsay Stanbury, you all for joining us. Um As Emma mentioned in her intro, California passed the board law in 2018. At the same time, Black Rock also came forward and said that they wanted to see two women on all the boards that they're investing in. It's been five years then the law was struck down. Things are constantly in flux. Olivia. I wanted to kick it off with you to talk about how the law being struck down has changed things and what you're seeing with your research. Um Thank you. Um Thank you for having this conversation. I'm so glad we're jumping right in on the importance of a woman on board. Um The S B 26 is sort of a good news, slightly bad news story. The good news being, there was such an enormous transformation in the number of women on boards when the law was implemented from 15% of board members in California being female to over 33%. And the sort of trajectory like this from 700 something seats filled by women to um 2100. Um, the, the bad news and, and we're just putting these numbers out today is the last two quarters show, not only has that trajectory paused, which is maybe to be expected. I mean, it could only grow at this rate for so long, but there's actually been a little dip just in the two quarters since, um, the two quarters of numbers we have since the law was overturned. I'm curious, I am assuming many people in this audience want to be on board, maybe you already are on board. Can I take a poll? How many of you are already on board? Ok. A number. How many of you would like to be on board that are not yet? Ok. Um, just on a big part of what you do is help women find board seats. I'm curious, can you tell us a little bit about how the women in the audience can go about finding a board seat? Sure. I mean, today, the vast majority of board seats are filled through personal networks. Uh That's why we started this organization. And so some of the bias that I like to give is also to clarify when I say network. What I mean by that, which is the people who put people and ultimately make the decision about the board member is typically a CEO an active board member or non gov chair or an investor. So one of the most proactive things women can do is to make a list of the people that have those, those roles in your personal networks that you already know uh to reach out proactively to those people and express your desire to sit on a board to remind them what you bring to a board because these are people that may have known you from earlier in your career, for example, and then to ask to stay top of mind with those people, Sylvia, I there is often a, you know, an entry way, so to speak with women serving first and nonprofit boards. And then moving to for profit boards, you have had a very varied career but did serve as CEO of girl scouts and more recently have moved into serving on uh for profit boards. I'm cur you know, how did you make that transition? And how do you recommend other women take the same jump? Well, thank you very much Lindsay and thank all of you for being here. We really need more women in the pipeline for corporate board. So this is so great. So I'll address one question first, which is nonprofit for for profit board. Is it worth it? Um You know, there is kind of a rhythm to how boards work. And so a really great way to learn is on a nonprofit board. So you begin to learn about committees, you learn about the structure, you learn about non gov. So that gives you a lot of confidence about how boards work and then how I was able to make the jump from when I was leaving Girl Scouts to then get on corporate boards. You know, what's so important is when you're on corporate boards, you're not an operator. So that's really important to understand and to even know what that word means, right? You're So when you're on a corporate board, three key things, it's about strategy, it's about governance and that one employee that you manage the CEO that's it. And so you have to be able to communicate that that's how you look at the world that you look at the world from a strategic perspective or from governance or you understand, you know, how to manage and work in ac suite. So when I was the CEO of Girl Scouts, I didn't talk about girl scouts as a philanthropy, I talked about how Girl scouts was helping to solve the critical workforce strategy, workforce needs, especially in technology and in particular in cyber security. And so I, I met many people back to your point. My network then got extended to meeting many ceos of technology companies because they were very interested in developing that pipeline for women. And so they got to hear me talk about how I thought about things strategically. So literally when the press release came out that I was stepping down from the Girl scouts within minutes, my phone rang and the board chair of Qualcomm, who had heard me speak about that and had partnered with me when he was at Paton Networks. He called me and said I want to sponsor you to be on the follow on the Qualcomm board. So it's very important, especially if you come from a technical background, how do you translate your skills or what you're doing in a strategic manner in talking about the language. That way, I want to make sure that I have an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. So be thinking about them, Jocelyn, we were talking backstage a little bit about titles and how varied they are and how you can be a CEO of a small company and not be doing quite as much as a VP at say a Netflix. I'm curious, you know, how, what are the challenges that women face with this kind of pipeline issue? We're where boards are thinking, you know, we need a CEO in order to have a woman on the board. Well, I think the strategic CEO S and boards are asking what do we need versus who do we know? And when they're asking the question about what do we need, what we find? And we've seen over 1200 board opportunities in the last four years is that the, what they need comes to us in terms of competencies and fall into buckets and that could be functional, that could be industry, that could be scaling and growth. In fact, scaling and growth is the number two thing that we hear on the inbound of opportunities. And so yes, when you think about Google or, you know, Microsoft and some of you are here actually, I mean, the purview in which those women are operating inside those large corporations is actually larger than some of the private companies that need the board member. And so titles don't mean a whole lot competencies do. So I do think one if, if you're on the opportunity side and you're saying I need a CEO or CFO sometimes that actually is true, but double clicking to make sure that's true is really important. And then for those seeking the opportunities realizing that you are more than your title and titles, you know, are a part of what you do. But it is really about the competencies that you have and that you bring to that board role, want to open it up to the audience. Are there any questions? I think we're on the side. You don't mind standing up when you ask the question and introducing yourself to uh nationwide. Um We hear a lot about hot topics in the boardroom. So I wanted you all to double click into what are the most prominent hot topics that we should be taking in consideration. I can just keep from a board meeting. So that's an easy one. You know, it's always cyber security, very key. The board I sit on two semiconductor boards. So if you ever think about what's going on in China, all those types of issues top of mind. So, you know, geopolitical issues are really big right now, obviously, cyber and then also climate E G are also very important issues that when you think about what your investors, what your stockholders, what your shareholders are asking about it really, there's a lot in that and I'm just gonna add to that, that the data shows that companies that have women on their boards do better on, uh, E S G issues. Hi. Hello. Yeah, with Comcast Cable. So, uh, first of all, I love the girl scouts. So thank you so much for being here. Um, and so do my girls. So thank you. Um, I did have a question around so now my mind is starting to roll a little bit. I've served on nonprofit boards but not, I haven't really considered for profit boards, but uh you mentioned something right now regarding scale. Uh So Comcast, everything we do has to be at scale. So can you talk to me a little bit about if I, if my mind is starting to go in this direction of serving on a for profit board? What's like the first step? So you said like network and I'm like, I, I'm blinking a little bit. So can you just, what is the next like small step that I can take? Right. So, well, one I would ask who's on your nonprofit board? I bet there's a lot of people sitting around that table who are connected to for profit companies and they've already seen you operate in a board setting. So don't forget that, uh don't forget your own board if you have exposure to them at your own company and if you don't ask for exposure, um can you sit in the board meeting? Can you at least see the materials I was first brought to the boardroom at 28. It is a different altitude. It is a different level of discussion to get exposure to the boardroom where you have that opportunity. And then I think there's this, we mentioned it backstage, the translation of what you're doing today and into what does that look like inside a boardroom? And that's along those kind of six areas of expertise. And I'm happy to spend time with you one on one to do that as well. So, hi, I'm Lisa Cost. I'm with Space Force. Um I am on a um uh corporate board and uh uh what I have found is that when you have one woman right on the board, it is a, it is a dramatically different conversation than if you have, for example, half the board being women. And so, um I just wanted to put that out there as a conversation topic because I have found, you know, in my own experience that the things that you talk about are fundamentally different. Um and, and very customer focused when you tend to have uh more women on the board. So just wanted to get your uh insights into that. I I'll just speak to it from the legal perspective. What you have experienced is indeed a general experience and that the benefits that come from having women or diverse boards in general, which are numerous really happen when there's not just a token but multiple. The magic number is three. Uh, generally women on boards. France's law requires 40% gender diversity in either way. But the California law is three for boards of, uh, more than five directors and it's exactly what you, what you said to. That's when the magic happens. Can I add to that? Um, I've been the first woman and the first independent on two boards. So I feel you, um, one is not enough, one is not what we're up here to change. Um We're up here to have more than one woman on board. The reality is because the numbers look the way they do. Many of us, many of you will be the first independent and the first woman. And I think the key there is asking what's next. So in neither of those boards, I'm the only woman anymore. Um So asking the CEO asking the board, what's the plan for? Number two, number three is a really critical step. I'm curious, you know, the law being struck down was a big issue. I think the fallout from SEB also, there was some really nasty op EDS about how diversity on boards is one of the reasons that they got into the mess. I'm sure we all have feelings about that. But I'm curious, are you concerned about that? Creating a bigger fallout of women on boards? I will say one of the reasons the California Partners project jumped on this issue. It was actually a law, one of the last laws signed by Jerry Brown on his way out of office. And when Jennifer Sibel Newsom and I co founded the California partners project, we took the focused on gender equity. We took this on because it was new, it was a like living experiment here in California. Um And because there were already studies coming out showing that it was detrimental to the companies in California just to have this law passed. And it was such, it was junk science. It was like stock prices had gone down. I'm sure it was, you know, there are other things happening in the market. Um but it is disheartening to me, it's just fuel like to keep to the facts and keep telling the positive um examples of what happens when you have a diverse board, anything that you would like to add, you know, to add just a little bit to that. You know, the other thing is we're experiencing, experiencing inflation and we hadn't before. And so when you're having so many changes, you find that people kind of shrink their networks and go back to their most trusted friends and advisers and networks. And if you think about it, you know, we've been really fortunate that we haven't had a lot of inflation. So it's been now it's a couple of decades back. And so they go back to those networks which many times did not include, you know, a very diverse population. And, and I think being able to, again, that's back to your words, you use the positioning that you use about how you're able to deal with, you know, high inflation times, how you're able to really, you know, look at things geopolitically how you can really grow and scale companies. Those are things that it's very important to make sure that you're communicating in. And then when you're on a board, you cannot lose sight of governance. So you, that's your job. And you've got to ask those questions because literally that is your job. You have three jobs, right? Strategy governance and the CEO. So you, no matter where you are, don't let the energy and the emotion of the time make you forget your actual role and responsibility, right? It all sounds a little intimidating, right? How do we very quickly prevent imposter syndrome in women going after board rolls, you're qualified. Um No, I I think it really is for those of you who are interested in serving on board, there's an incredible lever for change in our society. It's incredibly important uh that those women who are interested break through this, what I would call demystification of a room that many of us haven't been exposed to. And, and there are very clear ways to do that many of them discussed here today. So that's how I would leave it. And I would add that the average compensation for a company, a public company board director ranges from about 100,000 to $300,000 a year. So maybe it's an incentive to help you combat your imposter syndrome. Yeah, great point. The other thing is, you know, the first person you have to convince is yourself, there's a ton of great sources. Make sure you've got, you know, like your board bio that's different than a resume, get your C B in order to get those things. But then look at the mirror and say I deserve to be there, right? Thank you so much. Uh Hopefully we'll find them and ask them if they have questions. Um Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you everyone.