Opening Thoughts from Leadership for the Modern Leadership Roundtable

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Chief.

Operating Officer of the Women Business Collaborative, Gwen Young.

Good morning, everybody. I'm glad we're starting off with a lot of energy. Welcome today to the Modern Leadership Roundtable. So on behalf of wbc, Diligent and our host, Wells Fargo, we'd like to welcome you to this amazing day where all of you and all of us are going to talk about what's really driving impact, what's really happening out there in terms of gender equity, purpose and dei. So I'm really looking forward to it. My goal right now though is to give you a few logistics. The first one is your badge here will let you come and go all day. Of course we do not want you to leave, but this is will get you in and out of the building all day should you need to do anything. There is no password for the WI fi. I'm going to read these logistics. Coffee will be available all morning at the end of the hall, as you all saw. And there's water in the back of the room, as you'll see everywhere. And panelists are invited to grab a bottle on the table on your way up when you're speaking and so forth. We will have lunch at 12:30 in the cafe, which will be fantastic. And there will be a 5:30 reception which I hope all of you do not miss because I think that will be fantastic. I'm turning it over to Bai Ling from Wells Fargo, who is here, our host and opening us. Thank you for welcoming us to this space and thank you so much, Judith and Wells Fargo for hosting us. Bae, would you like to take it away?

Sure. Thank you so much and such a pleasure to host you all. Thank you for coming. I know many of you traveled here, really especially a big welcome for you all. It's so interesting. I'm not an active participant in wbc, but I followed you for quite some time. So thank you Ed and WBC for the great vision and your leadership. I particularly love your vision starts from equal position. I think you all know, right? Companies have come a long way making sure we pay comparably for comparable positions. But if you look at the representation, it's still very much the kind of the road forward that we all need to march together. I looked at the corp, you probably all know the stats, but Fortune 100 companies, women make up for more than 50% of the workforce, but only 25% of the senior leadership positions. Right? So this is where I do think we have a long way to go. But if I'm being optimist for a minute if we dial the clock back 15, 20, 25 years ago. Conversations like this certainly don't happen so frequently at this level of scale. So that has changed a lot, right? I'm sure you all remember the days where we're the only one in the whatever settings that we were in that has changed so much. The topic of inclusion no longer needs to be debated about whether it is important or not. It's expectation and it's part of the imperative. Still, after seeing all that, I'm very encouraged by the progress that we have made, but certainly a really long way to go for all of us. So I just want to really thank you and I know you will have a wonderful day. The agenda looks terrific. You'll have many, many interesting conversations to have.

So.

So without belaboring the point, let me turn it over to Edie. Thank you.

Thank you. Does everyone want to thank BEI Ling and Wells Fargo and to Judith Goldcran on our board. Thank you. We're really blessed. And it's about leadership. And we just said that we're so pleased that Wells Fargo stepped up and Lisa and I are just so pleased that we're talking about transparent data and change and for all those that stepped up to be change leaders. So we'll talk about how important diligent is in a second. But we want to say we're all about gratitude. We look at Margaret Bilket and we look all over the room. Our board members like Paula Bennett and we're Kip Wright and we're saying is thank you for stepping up. You know, WBC in three and a half years has built a nonprofit with 75 women's business organization. We think we're reaching about 10 million women business leaders and the men that support us, these two work on allies of hers. And with that, I think, you know, taken out there, nine action initiatives. So just like BEI Ling on the C Suite, we know the Data on women CEOs and how we're driving change. We know the data across the board on the C Suite and driving and diversity is in every one of our 20, 25, 2030 goals. Because if we don't change women of color as our sisters is shame on us to change the world. And so it is so important today we're looking at best companies to drive fast. Our motto, as you know, is faster together. And we don't do it without all of us getting together and driving change. And with that, we just want to say it is all of our stakeholders. I think you look how hard Our team works. And we want to say to Gwen and the entire team, Clay, for putting together the session, thank you to now nearly 70 sponsors. We've got 35 companies that have stepped up for companies of purpose and our partner organizations, but we have over 200 volunteers. And if we look at not only our board, but if we look at our advisory council, which is now 400 strong, and the subsets of what we're doing to work on all of these initiatives, it is really so strong. But this is about us together. And I think we want to look at the woman that's driving Diligent and how important Diligent is. So our friend Lisa Edwards. And you know, when we talk about how fast we're driving, equal position, pay and power, we look at Diligent and how proud we are, Lisa, that we formed this partnership. And just everyone you talk to that see Diligent grow. And, Dottie, we want to salute you and the Diligent Institute, the great study that you put out. I think it's very fitting that for the next three days, you're going to be running a board forum, really, on governance, which is very, very exciting, but that you've built 750,000 CEOs and board members within your community worldwide to do good things. What we were talking about, let's don't attack capitalism. Let's go show that we are change leaders. And that's what today is all about. It's why we work so hard together to really show that we're making a difference. And it's not only the big companies today. We've represented with so many great entrepreneurs that are here, those that are truly making a difference. We Forget we have 13 million women entrepreneurs just in this country alone. And we have 24 entrepreneur groups. We have 27 board groups that are working with us. So we really do it together. But, Lisa, now to you. All right? And you really are driving change.

Thanks. Thanks so much, Edie. And thank you all for making the effort to get out here on a little bit of a rainy day. It is a pleasure to see so many faces in the room. And Diligent is so proud to. To be here with you all today. And, Edie, I would put it back to you. We are so grateful for your leadership in this area. I've known Edie for a number of years through a group called C200. And I saw Edie out of breakfast. Now, was that a year ago or two years ago at some point? And it was a breakfast hosted by Janice Alig, who I Think I saw her name out there and I said, hey Edie, I hear you're doing this sort of group of groups and bringing it all together. And that's so important. And the next thing I knew, we were in the whirlwind, as many of you who know Edie can probably attest to. So it is my pleasure to be here with you today. I've been asked several times this morning, what is diligent? So let me just give you the quick what is diligent? We are the world's largest SaaS software company for governance risk and compliance software. So that means things like sox audit compliance, third party risk management, esg, and importantly the one that Edie mentioned. We are the market leader in the board portal space. So many of you who are on public or private boards of directors may use our software to log into your meetings, to use it to manage your board meetings. So we looked at that place of privilege and said we do have all of these people who have us on their phones and their iPads approaching 800,000 people in 25,000 countries, in 130, sorry, 130 countries around the world and 25,000 companies. And we said, how can we be a part of the solution? And that's where we came up with the notion of who better than a sitting board member to nominate a board ready person of color, a woman, someone ready for their next opportunity. And so that is one of the things that we put in place at Diligent to make sure that nominating and governance committees had a place to go to look for candidates when they were on our platform. And you know, we've gotten so much positive feedback from it. It's been a very valuable and free resource to our customers and we look forward to continuing to lean in on where can be a part of advancing the dialogue on women in leadership. So on that note, I will add one statistic to or two statistics actually, actually to Bayes statistics where she said 50% coming into corporate America are women. 60% of women in America graduate from college. So there's a drop off already by the time you get to the first job. It is 8% when you get to CEO and it's about 24% when you get to boards of directors. So there's something that happens along the way and it's something that I personally, personally am very, very passionate about trying to understand and fix and adjust. I fundamentally believe that you can do well while doing good. And I think that is something that I see lots of nodding in the room about I feel like we all share that and it's how do we communicate that to the world? Make sure that we bring everyone along, because I believe that you can have a high performing company and be leaning into some of these ESG issues. So I'm excited to be here today to talk to you all about that and thank you again for hosting us. And I should say congratulations for being on the Wells Fargo list this weekend. For companies that are of purpose, Diligent has been a company of purpose before. It was cool. And we intend to continue to be a company of purpose because we think it is the right thing to do and because we think it enhances performance. So with that, I will turn it back over to you, Edie, to launch us off on the day.

Well, and everyone, let's just look at, we ask all the CEOs that we honored and if we look at Accenture and we look at Zoetis and others that are joining us today, we asked them about purpose and we asked them about their integrated strategy. So that's their board of directors, all their talent. It's about their suppliers, it's about the brand, and it's about commitment to community and how do you put it all together in an integrated strategy to drive change against numbers? And that's what we're about. And diligent leading, so help us as you all are, because that's what today is about. The carefully crafted program that we've got. The importance of the diversity officer role, not just for ergs, but a true leader of change today as we see diversity in the boardroom. And then from diversity, we're going to a terrific board panel which is surely historic when we look at these leaders and the boards that they're leading. And we'll talk about that. And as we go to lunch and we talk about companies of purpose and two amazing panels on companies of purpose and end up with our organization partners and then the reception. We are recording the day because we believe in reaching big numbers, as Gwen and I share with you. We hit 4,100 people that joined us for the summit, but then we got the recordings to at least a million people. So we intend to get this message out to the world of change. But we couldn't do it without Diligent. Lisa. So as we turn on, and again as we started every day, we want to thank and applaud you. One of the things we do is count so that what we do is really build that change by accelerate and then celebrate. So if we can think that all day long, what are we doing to accelerate and change the numbers and then what do we do to really celebrate that? Company by company, this day is about leadership. All of us stop and reflect a minute. Are we giving credit to everybody else in leadership that are stepping up? So again, thank you. Lisa and Sharon Reynolds, can you pop up? You were talking to us last night about an historic day. Thank you, Edie.

Good morning, everyone. You know, I think purposeful leaders and purposeful direction is the new norm. That's where we're going. We're going to change the nation and change the world. Good morning. I'm Sharon Reynolds and I am the president and CEO of the Devmar family of companies. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee and I'm also a board director for the WBC and the chair of the advisory council of this unbelievable organization where today history is being made. Just remember this day, remember what you're going to learn and remember to share because we will be able to tell other women about this event as well as our children. I have a five year old grandbaby and I don't want her to turn 25 and still be reminded of the staggering statistics that we're seeing today. We're changing. So the WBC is all about change. So I'm honored to be here. Enjoy the day and thank you, Edie and thank you for everyone for coming.