STILL GOT QUESTIONS?
Visit comstocksmag.com or subscribe to our Action Items podcast to
hear more on board-readiness from Kim Box, Diane Miller and other
female executives.
We’re also fielding questions via [email protected]
ilar on her LinkedIn page, cutting the
length and collapsing her chronologi-
cally listed executive roles into a narra-
tive about what she’s done as a leader.
Still, don’t count on a recruiter walk-
ing you in the front door. Box says that
though that connection helped her bet-
ter market herself, board openings ar-
en’t posted, so candidates are most of-
ten selected on the basis of connections
rather than through recruiters. (The
group that actually does the selecting
typically is the nominating or gover-
nance committee, with shareholders
voting on their recommendations.)
Area experts all mention strategic
networking as essential to getting into
position, since many board directors
are chosen through elite social net-
works. “People on boards want others
who they’ve worked with,” says Julie
Reinganum, who coaches CEOs at Vi-
stage International and has served on
the boards of Hong Kong-based Jave-
lin Investments and Texas-based The
Bombay Company. Her connections
were what got her invited to serve at the
latter firm. The company was looking
to expand internationally, and her con-
tact on the inside recommended Rein-
ganum on the grounds that she’d just
sold her China-focused management
consulting firm.
Akers recommends volunteering
with the Sacramento chapter of the Na-
tional Association of Corporate Direc-
tors, which is being reconstituted, with
the help of NACD’s San Francisco chap-
ter, after a period of relative dorman-
cy. He says corporate advisory boards
— which provide nonbinding advice to
company leaders — also provide a good
training ground, while nonprofit board
service can facilitate the networking
needed for a corporate director posi-
tion in the future. But he cautions that
nonprofit board service “isn’t as rele-
vant to the technical skills — like un-
derstanding industry-specific market
segmentation, governance and organi-
zational development — that will mat-
ter in getting onto a corporate board.”
And certain skills are in higher de-
mand than others. Boards reliably need
CPAs and attorneys, but Akers says
that expertise in advertising and mar-
keting are in particular demand now.
And Miller says that half of searches for
board candidates she’s seeing call for
someone with a technical background.
Some industries have more gender-
diverse boards than others — Reinga-
num points to retail as one. Current-
ly, and perhaps counterintuitively,
more-established firms boast more
gender-diverse boards: One analysis
last year of data on public companies
found that firms that had recently held
an initial public offering picked women
for only 10 percent of their board seats
— compared with 34 percent for the
rest of the sample.
Education and training also help,
though there’s a big caveat. With SB 826
in place, it’s easy to be lured by the idea
that continuing education and work-
A national campaign
for 20% women on
corporate boards by
2020
UPCOMING EVENTS
MAY 1 ST 8AM-1PM
Get on Board! Workshop
NOVEMBER 21 ST 8-11AM
National Conversation
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both events at
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questions
[email protected]
March 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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