Colorado CEOs, Board Chairs and Directors attended a Boardbound event on May 4th to celebrate progress and address the remaining challenges in board diversity. We all want Colorado to be a leader in board diversity for our public and private companies, but we are still a bit below the national average.
John Kelley, Chair of CereHealth, and a mentor for our Corporate Boardbound program, was the host for the event. With Noreen Doyle, former Chair of Newmont, they shared their insights as Boardbound Trailblazers starting in 2016 to support efforts to get women on corporate boards. Newmont is the only Colorado company that has had three or more women on their board since 2011. Gloria Zamora, Chair of our CEOs for Women on Boards committee, talked with John Hayes, Chairman and CEO of Ball Corporation, and Javier Rodriguez, CEO of DaVita, about their success in building strong diverse boards.
In small breakout groups, the CEOs and board directors discussed gender and racial board diversity. The most important change to achieve board diversity is to broaden the search for qualified women candidates, and to consider skills and expertise other than CEO or C-suite positions. We hope companies will consider our Boardconnect program to be introduced to talented women who meet their requirements.
The evening concluded with eight company leaders receiving an award for having a gender balanced board in 2020. We selected eight original and unique art works, to symbolize the different path that each company takes to achieve board diversity, and we hope the art itself will remind the CEOs of their aspirations to help their company achieve their diversity objectives, and will inspire other CEOs to implement board diversity.
Boardbound’s mission is to open board positions to women in Colorado and beyond. Yet, we know we are not the decisionmaker for board positions. That is why we are so thankful for the support of the CEOs for Women on Boards community. We support these CEOs and boards in every way we can.
While Colorado has increased the proportion of women on public company boards from 11% in 2015 to 21% in 2020, we know Colorado can be a leader in board excellence, and that requires improving our board diversity from average to exceptional. We have more work to do, and the CEOs and board leaders working with us are the key to success.
Anne Noonan, CEO of Summit Materials (NYSE: SUM), (photo above) is one of the eight CEOs and companies recognized as winners of the 2020 Gender Balanced Board awarded by Boardbound by Women's Leadership Foundation. The award itself is an original painting from a Boulder, CO artist, Laura Brenton (see artwork Anne is holding).