More than having such caring and nurturing hands, women nowadays have also demonstrated their power and strength on the business and corporate side. Jo Lynne Whiting, the Board Chair of the Women’s Leadership Foundation, believes that having more women on board is critical to the success of companies. She talks about how women can become a great leader to spearhead company success and create better economic development.
We’re incredibly fortunate because I have Jo Lynne Whiting. She is the Board Chair of the Women’s Leadership Foundation. I had the pleasure of meeting her at an event where women were talking about being on boards. Jo Lynne, thanks for taking your time. Tell us a little bit about the foundation and what your mission is.
Boardbound by Women’s Leadership Foundation, we are working for advocacy because we believe that having more women on boards is critical to the success of their companies. Fortunately, the research bears that out. We also work on the supply. We have a Boardbound program that equips women to step into board service and we work on-demand. We think there are a lot of very talented women already out there. The more that companies, CEOs, board directors, the chair nominating governance asked for those women and look for them, the better off we’ll be and we’ll have more balance on our boards.
How long has the foundation been around?
We were legally formed in 2002. The Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce formed an independent foundation and we were rather dormant until 2011 when we adopted a mission. The way we did that is we did research of what’s already going on here in Colorado, where are women succeeding and where are the gaps. One of the gaps that stood out was breaking that glass ceiling to get on the board. That is what we focused on. We started with research. In the very first research study, we learned that there was only 7% of the board positions in Colorado held by women.
How did that relate to the rest of the country as a comparison?
At that point in time, we didn’t have a good benchmark because you need to adjust to the size of companies. Back in 2011, you’ll hear publications say, “We’ve got 12%. We’ve got 14%.” They might have been only talking about the larger companies and here in Colorado, we do have a lot of smaller companies which tend to have fewer. Now, we know that and we know we’re about 2 percentage points behind the national average. We’re about 9 percentage points behind some of the best states whose companies that are headquartered there have done a great job of getting women on boards.
As far as percentage gains from where you were, you have made great strides.
It's everyone, both men and women, working together that are going to make this a better world and a better business environment.
We’re excited. It is slow, but it is a steady increase. We started at seven and I’m very proud to say that as of December 31st of 2018, we’re at 14.4%.
How does that put you in comparison to other states?
We’re still behind by about those 2 percentage points. The part that’s encouraging is if you look at 2018, we had a 2.1 percentage point gain and the previous six years it was...
