Board Diversity - OutBüro

Intuit Board Appoints Suzanne Nora Johnson as New Board Chair

November 16, 2021 (updated November 16, 2021) Published by BusinessWire

Brad Smith to Step Down as Executive Chairman in January 2022

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU), the global technology platform that makes TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp, today announced that Suzanne Nora Johnson has been appointed by the Intuit Board of Directors to the role of Board Chair, effective in January 2022, following the Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Brad Smith, who served as CEO of Intuit from 2008 to 2018, Chairman from 2016 to 2018, and Executive Chairman since January 2019, will step down from that position immediately following the Annual Meeting. Smith intends to stand for re-election as a non-executive director of the company at the Annual Meeting.

“I am thrilled that Suzanne will be the next Chair of Intuit’s Board of Directors. She is a strong leader and has been an incredible thought partner over the years for me and the Board,” said Sasan Goodarzi, CEO of Intuit. “I look forward to working closely with her as we continue our mission to power prosperity for consumers and small businesses around the world. I also want to thank Brad for his incredible leadership as the Executive Chairman.”

Nora Johnson has served as an independent member of Intuit’s Board since 2007 and as Lead Independent Director since 2016. She currently chairs the Compensation and Organizational Development Committee of the Board. She brings extensive experience in Board-level oversight of strategy, financial reporting, regulatory and compliance matters and executive compensation. She also brings strong business leadership from her prior role as Vice Chairman of The Goldman Sachs Group in managing large, complex, global institutions. Intuit will continue to benefit from her expertise in managing change in the financial services industry, public policy and the macro-economic environment. Nora Johnson currently serves on the boards of Pfizer Inc. and Visa Inc.

“I am honored to be appointed Chair of the Intuit Board. I look forward to continuing to work with Sasan and the Board to continue delivering for all our stakeholders,” said Nora Johnson. “Brad Smith has been an outstanding Executive Chairman, and I look forward to his continued service as a member of the Board.”

All changes will be effective immediately following the Annual Meeting of Shareholders in January 2022 and the directors’ election by shareholders.

About Intuit

Intuit is the global technology platform that helps consumers and small businesses overcome their most important financial challenges. Serving more than 100 million customers worldwide with TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper. We never stop working to find new, innovative ways to make that possible. Please visit us for the latest information about Intuit, our products and services, and find us on social.

Contacts

Investors
Kim Watkins

Intuit Inc.

650-944-3324

kim_watkins@intuit.com

Media
Kali Fry

Intuit Inc.

650-944-3036

kali_fry@intuit.com

Equilar Partners with Disability:IN to Advance the Inclusion of Board Candidates with Disabilities

July 27, 2021 (updated July 27, 2021) Published by BusinessWire

Equilar BoardEdge will capture disability self-disclosure metrics for companies looking to recruit qualified board members with disabilities and publicly report their efforts

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Equilar, the leading provider of corporate leadership data solutions, today announced a partnership with Disability:IN, the global organization driving disability inclusion and equality in business. It is the first partnership dedicated to advancing boardroom diversity through the inclusion of business executives with disabilities.

The two organizations consulted with the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) to develop a new data flag in the Equilar BoardEdge platform that will capture disability self-identification data on individual profiles of board-ready candidates. Senior executives and board members can create a profile in the Equilar BoardEdge database of over one million candidate profiles. As data accumulates, Equilar will use the metrics to help companies find talent with disabilities as well as report on the progress made toward improved representation.

Disability:IN will join the Equilar Diversity Network of nearly 50 partner organizations that work with Equilar to support board diversity initiatives, including Nasdaq, Executive Leadership Council and Out Leadership.

“We’re proud to work with Disability:IN to expand the scope and depth of diversity and inclusion efforts at the board level to people with disabilities,” said David Chun, Founder and CEO of Equilar. “People with disabilities are integral to our society and our workforces. It’s important that they have representation at the highest level of corporate organizations to ensure their voices are heard.”

Representation and disclosure of individuals with disabilities at the board of director level and in the C-suite has emerged as a material issue in ESG investing and corporate governance. Investors increasingly recognize the impact board diversity has on business performance and are asking companies to measure, benchmark and publicly disclose their disability inclusion metrics. This includes 30 institutional investors representing $2.8 trillion that have signed the Joint Investor Statement on Disability Inclusion.

“You can’t be what you can’t measure. To create a truly inclusive workforce, we need leadership at the top from those who openly identify and talk about having a disability, in order to reduce the fear associated with self-identification and recognize disability as a strength,” said Chad Jerdee, Board Chair, Disability:IN. “Through our work and with the support of Equilar, we can start to gain that representation in the boardroom and create meaningful change in business and society.”

According to the 2021 Disability Equality Index (DEI), an annual benchmarking program created by Disability:IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), only 5% of 12 million employees and 10% of senior executives at the 319 participating companies self-identified as having a disability. The 2022 DEI will include three new questions to ascertain whether companies are pursuing the nomination of board members with disabilities as well as publicly reporting this information.

“People with disabilities have been calling on corporate America to recognize their status as a marginalized minority group akin to other underrepresented populations. Equilar believes that people with disabilities are an important component of building diverse board talent. The addition of disability metrics is a powerful tool for advancing corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives and for giving people with disabilities an opportunity to lend their diverse abilities and perspectives at the highest levels—in the boardroom,” said Ted Kennedy, Jr., Board Chair of the DEI.

About Disability:IN

Disability:IN is a global organization driving disability inclusion and equality in business. More than 280 corporations trust Disability:IN to activate and achieve disability inclusion across their enterprise and in the broader corporate mainstream. Through the world’s most comprehensive disability inclusion benchmarking; best-in-class conferences and programs; and expert counsel and engagement, Disability:IN works with leading businesses to create long-term business and societal impact. Join us at disabilityin.org/AreYouIN #AreYouIN

About the Equilar Diversity Network

Launched in September 2016 to advance diverse representation in boardrooms across the globe, EDN now consists of more than 45 partner organizations and nearly 170,000 diverse board candidates, supplementing nearly one million candidate profiles already in the Equilar BoardEdge database. EDN is a consortium of leading diversity-focused organizations consolidating robust registries of board-ready executives into one searchable database. Since the Network was founded, more than 2,000 members across EDN partner organizations have been appointed to corporate boards.

About Equilar

Equilar is the leading provider of corporate leadership data solutions. Companies of all sizes rely on Equilar for their most important business decisions, including 70% of the Fortune 500 and institutional investors representing over $20 trillion in assets. Equilar offers data-driven solutions for business development, recruiting, executive compensation and shareholder engagement that bring together business leaders to drive exceptional results. Founded in 2000, Equilar is cited regularly by Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other leading media outlets. Learn more at www.equilar.com.

Contacts

Amit Batish

Director, Content & Communications

Equilar

650-241-6697

abatish@equilar.com

Exabeam Announces Support of FirstBoard.io to Increase Women Leaders on Technology Boards

July 27, 2021 (updated July 27, 2021) Published by BusinessWire

Exabeam CMO Sherry Lowe is among the founding members working to establish greater diversity and inclusion in C-suites and boardrooms

FOSTER CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#Exabeam—Exabeam, the security analytics and automation company, today announced its support of FirstBoard.io, a curated network of highly qualified and diverse technology leaders seeking corporate director roles.

“Having industry-leading companies like Exabeam support the goal of increasing diversity in the boardroom is critical to really pulling our mission forward,” said Rita Scroggin, founder of FirstBoard.io. “We are grateful to have an exceptional veteran executive like Exabeam CMO Sherry Lowe as a founding member. Sherry is committed to FirstBoard.io’s mission to find opportunities for women leaders ready to offer their extraordinary skills and experiences to tech industry boards.”

In partnership with several leading companies, FirstBoard.io focuses on removing persistent obstacles that have prevented women from being chosen for executive boards and the C-suite, and by doing so, fosters greater success for companies across the tech industry.

The numbers speak for themselves. Higher corporate financial performance has continually been attributed to greater diversity in both management and board-level seats. Credit Suisse Research Institute found that shares of companies with more than 20% female management outperformed organizations with less than 15% female management by 5%. In addition, a study published in the Harvard Business Review noted that after companies appointed women to the C-suite, openness to change increased by 10%.

Yet, until a mandatory diversity requirement is enforced, the default choice to fill the boardroom or the C-suite remains white men. Beyond exclusion, contributing to the challenges for women leaders to be chosen for board seats is, in general, a lack of visibility of the women who are ready for the roles.

“As women, we are responsible for helping other women rise through the corporate ranks,” said Lowe. “Exabeam has established programs explicitly for recognizing women leaders, and that is why our sponsorship of FirstBoard.io is a great fit. I believe in this mission, and we are committed to elevating women leaders and highlighting the value they can bring to the boardroom and the C-suite.”

While the tech industry has made some strides to improve diversity and inclusion practices, there is far more work to be done. Chief marketing officer (CMO) positions across industries are largely held by women, for instance. In fact, 14 women round out the top 25 of Forbes’ Most Influential CMOs list, yet CMOs are often missing from technology company boards.

Lowe continued, “The benefit of having female board members is obvious in that they bring different perspectives and skill sets required for real success. If you only hire one type of person, you will only get one type of view of the world. People of all backgrounds and perspectives are needed, along with representation of all functional areas across the business. Board meetings are more effective when the people in the room also understand what it takes to run an effective global marketing program, which is directly interconnected with how to strengthen the company’s external brand and culture for both moral and long-term recruitment purposes.”

Exabeam fosters a corporate culture that champions women, men, and diversity for all. This sponsorship is the latest addition to the Exabeam Cares program, dedicated to improving local and global communities through investing in give-back programs, primarily focused around education and diversity. The overarching program also partners with the ExaGals program, which focuses on supporting and empowering the women of Exabeam, as well as women in the technology community at large, with career development, education and personal growth opportunities.

About FirstBoard.io

FirstBoard.io is a curated collective of diverse technology leaders who have been in key operating roles at startups and private and public technology companies. FirstBoard.io is an invite-only community of highly qualified women who have been selected based on criteria including technical depth, operational leadership and go to market experience, amongst other criteria. FirstBoard.io does not charge its members a fee. For more information on members of the FirstBoard.io mission, please visit https://www.firstboard.io.

About Exabeam

Exabeam is a global cybersecurity leader that adds intelligence to every IT and security stack. We are reinventing the way security teams use analytics and automation to solve threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR), from common security threats to the most critical that are difficult to identify. The Exabeam Security Operations Platform is a comprehensive cloud-delivered solution that leverages machine learning and automation using a prescriptive, outcomes-based approach to TDIR. It is designed and built to help security teams detect external threats, compromised users and malicious adversaries, minimize false positives, and make security success the norm. For more information, visit www.exabeam.com.

Exabeam, the Exabeam logo, Exabeam Fusion, Threat Hunter, Smart Timelines and Security Operations Platform are service marks, trademarks or registered marks of Exabeam, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective owners. © 2021 Exabeam, Inc. All rights reserved.

Contacts

Allyson Stinchfield

Exabeam

ally@exabeam.com

Alyssa Pallotti

Touchdown PR for Exabeam

860.878.2518

exabeam@touchdownpr.com

Lawsuit Filed Challenging State of California’s Sex and Racial Quotas for Corporate Board Membership

July 13, 2021 (updated July 13, 2021) Published by Cision

Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment Alleges California Statutes SB 826 and AB 979 Are Unfair and Unconstitutional

AUSTIN, Texas, July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Yesterday, the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, a nonprofit membership organization headquartered in Austin, Texas, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California statutes SB 826 and AB 979— recently enacted laws that require all publicly traded California-based corporations to implement sex and race quotas for board members. The complaint is attached: Case 2:21-cv-05644.

Lawsuit Filed Challenging State of California’s Sex and Racial Quotas for Corporate Board Membership

In 2018 and 2020, California enacted two laws—SB 826 and AB 979—that require all publicly traded corporations headquartered in California to discriminate based on sex and race in selecting their board members.

The 2018 statute, SB 826, requires corporations headquartered in California to have specific numbers of women on their boards, depending on how many seats the board has. The 2020 statute, AB 979, similarly requires these companies to set aside a specific number of director seats for members of “underrepresented communit[ies],” which it defines as those who self-identify as “Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, [] Alaska Native, . . . gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

As noted in the complaint, both of these laws are an exercise in unconstitutional and patronizing social engineering. The legal regime they institute relies on and perpetuates invidious racial categories and sex stereotypes that the American legal system has rightly discarded. These statutes not do not claim to remedy any particular past discrimination. Rather, California says that mandating race and sex discrimination is justifies because it thinks imposing these quotas will be lucrative for California’s corporations and shareholders and thus for the state.

If the Fourteenth Amendment and our foundational civil rights laws stand for anything, it is that money is no justification for race or sex discrimination.

The members of the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment include biological males who do not self-identify as women or underrepresented minorities as defined in AB 979 and are actively seeking corporate director positions. Because of California’s laws, they are unable to compete on an equal footing for positions on the boards of directors of corporations headquartered in California, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Other members of the Alliance are stockholders in publicly traded companies headquartered in California who object to being required to illegally discriminate on the basis of race and sex in nominating and selecting board candidates.

Edward Blum, president of the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, said, “California’s sex and race quotas for corporate board membership are indisputably violations of our nation’s civil rights laws and the U.S. Constitution. It is our hope the courts end these unfair and unlawful practices immediately.”

Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment
FairRecruitment.org
703-505-1922
edwardjayblum@gmail.com

Contact: Edward Blum, President
edwardjayblum@gmail.com
(703) 505-1922

Equilar Diversity Network Partners With Out Leadership to Expand Access for LGBTQ+ Board Candidates

June 23, 2021 (updated June 23, 2021) Published by BusinessWire

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Equilar, the leading provider of corporate leadership data solutions, today announced a new Equilar Diversity Network partnership with Out Leadership. This new partnership will expand the scope of director candidates within Equilar BoardEdge, increasing opportunities for LGBTQ+ executives to sit on boards of directors while bolstering public companies’ ability to achieve what Out Leadership calls “Return on Equality,” and the goals of its specific Quorum initiative on LGBTQ+ Board representation.

According to a recent Equilar study, just 0.4% of Russell 3000 companies disclosed that they had LGBTQ+ members on their boards. Because sexual orientation must be self-identified, LGBTQ+ executives are not only significantly underrepresented in corporate boardrooms, they are also likely undercounted.

The continued efforts of organizations like Out Leadership support executives who self-identify. This not only will lead to more awareness of highly qualified LGBTQ+ candidates, but also will ultimately result in a more accurate representation of the community as companies increase recruitment and voluntary disclosures of diverse members.

“LGBTQ+ awareness continues to increase in the workplace. And boards without representation from these communities risk missing important factors that can empower their companies to better serve employees and customers,” said David Chun, Founder and CEO of Equilar. “We’re proud to partner with Out Leadership and continue our efforts to disprove the notion that there is a lack of qualified, diverse board candidates.”

“Out Leadership is proud to be the LGBTQ+ partner of Equilar Diversity Network. This partnership is extremely timely as we observed signs of a growing consensus among business leaders, regulators and the markets that the Board diversity agenda must be inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity. With our partner Equilar, we want to showcase that the LGBTQ+ Board talent is here and ready,” said Out Leadership CEO and Founder Todd Sears.

Out Leadership was one of the nominating groups for the recently released Agenda Diversity 100, a list of pre-vetted and board-ready candidates from underrepresented demographic groups published by Agenda, the Financial Times’ publication for corporate board members. The Agenda Diversity 100 utilized the Equilar BoardEdge platform as a data source, which will now include Out Leadership’s network. The addition of these board-ready candidates will enhance companies’ ability to recruit directors who combine professional experience with diverse perspectives integral to the future of Corporate America.

About Out Leadership

Out Leadership is the oldest and largest global LGBTQ+ business advisory that partners with the world’s most influential companies to build business opportunities, cultivate talent, and drive LGBTQ+ equality forward. We believe that LGBTQ+ inclusion positively impacts business results, and that including LGBTQ+ people at the most senior level of executive leadership builds business. We call this idea Return on Equality™.

Comprising more than 80 global member firms and dedicated to cross-industry collaboration, Out Leadership is a certified B Corporation. Out Leadership convenes CEOs, business leaders and allies at exclusive invitation-only events across 4 continents. Out Leadership also operates three talent initiatives: Quorum, which aims to increase LGBTQ+ representation on corporate boards; OutNEXT, the first global talent development program for emerging LGBTQ+ leaders; and OutWOMEN, connecting senior-level LGBTQ+ women in business.

About the Equilar Diversity Network

About Equilar

Contacts

Amit Batish
Director, Content & Communications

Equilar

650-241-6697

abatish@equilar.com

Tag: Board Diversity

Intuit Board Appoints Suzanne Nora Johnson as New Board Chair

Equilar Partners with Disability:IN to Advance the Inclusion of Board Candidates with Disabilities

Exabeam Announces Support of FirstBoard.io to Increase Women Leaders on Technology Boards

Lawsuit Filed Challenging State of California’s Sex and Racial Quotas for Corporate Board Membership

Equilar Diversity Network Partners With Out Leadership to Expand Access for LGBTQ+ Board Candidates

what can i do in groups?

how can i participate and remain private?

can i be my full self on outbüro?

men’s only groups

women’s only groups

content categories

recent members

recent media

community hashtags