Boards have historically been dominated by white men, and although diversity on boards is improving, some candidates are still being overlooked, The New York Times reported Jan. 3.
According to an ISS Corporate Solutions analysis cited by the Times, directors who are of nonwhite ethnic origin make up 4,500 board seats of companies in the Russell 3000 stock index. This is 25 percent more than there were at the end of 2020. Board members from underrepresented groups make up 17 percent of all board seats, and women account for 27 percent of all members.
Board members have huge amounts of power and influence on businesses, with the ability to choose executives and shape company decision-making. Some newly appointed board members from underrepresented groups question why it took so long for them to be noticed.
Often, hiring for board seats come from the social and professional circles of executives, a group that is likely to be dominated by white men, according to the Times. Those who have had the most traditional corporate experience also tend to be white men.
"If you look around, everyone wants a sitting or recently retired CEO who's done very similar things to what their company's trying to do sometime in the last decade," Jennifer Tejada, chief executive of San Francisco based-software company PagerDuty, told the Times. "That's a very narrow lens to look through."