WBCFasterTogether: The 2021 Women CEOs in America Report Overview

Good afternoon and good afternoon and welcome to the Women Business Collaborative Faster Together series where today you'll be speaking with myself, Gwen Young, the Chief Operating Officer and Evie Fraser, the CEO. The Women Business Collaborative is an unprecedented alliance of over 60 women's business organizations collaborating together to achieve equal position, pay and power for all businesswomen. It is the first business movement dedicated to equity and diversity and it is comprised of professional men and women business organizations, public and private companies and the media. Accelerating change through collaboration, advocacy, action and accountability. By uniting more than 60 of the leading women's business organizations and 430 individual men and women, the WBC activates our vast network of to attain immediate and long term results against nine essential action initiatives. The first three focus on executive women's leadership in business. These are CEO leadership and sponsorship of women CEOs, women in the C Suite and Executive Leadership with P and L Responsibility and Women in the Boardroom. Our next three action initiatives focus on underrepresentation of women in particular business industries, women entrepreneurs and access to capital, women in capital and finance and women in technology. Our final three are critical to equity for women in business, diversity, equity and inclusion, gender and pay parity and women in the pipeline. Thus, our work focuses on ensuring more women CEOs in the C suite and on boards, a demand for gender and pay parity, increasing access to institutional capital and capital for women entrepreneurs, driving more women as controllers of capital allocation parity for women in underrepresented business sectors such as technology and leveraging learning and development to drive pipeline promotions. Interwoven across every action Initiative is our call for inclusivity, diversity and equality for all women, including women of color, the LGBTQIA community and other disenfranchised women. Our collaboration and network is spearheaded by our board partners, advisory and leadership councils, and the WBC reaches millions of business leaders across the United States and the globe. As I stated, the WBC is committed to diversity. Our councils and Board of Directors include more than 34% people of color and it is this power of combining a collaborative approach with our women's business movement that's already creating momentum and accelerating the pace of change for business women. Today I'm speaking with Edie Frazier, the CEO of the wbc, to talk about our work in promoting and sponsoring women CEOs. On October 13, the WBC released the second annual report, Women CEOs in America just Changing the Face of Business Leadership. The WC produces this report in collaboration with the SEN, the Committee of 200 and Catalyst, and we released this report at The national press Club with two women CEOs, Jenny Johnson of Franklin Templeton Investments and Marjorie Krause of APCO. The 2020 report, last year's report was the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive breakdown of Women running Fortune 500, Fortune 1000, Russell 3000s and P, Private companies over a billion and entrepreneurs over half a million across the United States. And we are proud to release this updated list. The data, the trends and highlight the women in the 2020 Women CEOs in America report. You will see the facts and the stories. And while the numbers for women's leadership are moving in the right direction, 8.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, up from 6.6 in 2019. The progress is still slow and not reflective of the nation. The reality is women of color hold just 1% of all of these positions. Edie, can you tell us a little bit more about these numbers and the importance of this report?

Thanks, Gwen. And to everyone. Data and role models are so important to WBC as well as what we call the thought leadership becomes the action leadership as we look at every issue. So for the women's CEO report, as we collaborated with, as you said, catalyst, Ascend and C200 and us, we all look deep at, as you said, the Fortune 500 versus the Fortune thousand, the S&P, the Russell 3000 and private companies essentially above 1 billion. The total average is about 7% if we look at all the groups. But we are looking at how increasing that pipeline in terms of the numbers, Gwen, just as you said, we must address the 1% women of color at every one of these constituencies. The fact we only have five women of color in the Fortune 500 and that we are looking to really build across the system. You and I know that with this report and we're hoping that each, each of you reads it, discusses it as a subject of your leadership because we will talk together about what it's going to take to change the pipeline and what that means for CEO action and board action as well. But we have made a commitment to salute every woman that gets named to be a CEO. So, Gwen, you and I celebrated this morning yesterday's announcement with Rent the Runway, new CEO on NASDAQ and a woman CEO that brought in an all female team. So as we go together, you and I will tell the stories with our fellow organizations and with the companies and we will salute leadership across the board.

So you mentioned Rent the Runway and I know you and I were talking this morning, Edie, about kind of what it looks like for 2021 for women CEOs, we talk about Karen lynch at CVS or Jane Frazier at Citibank, in addition to the women CEOs, what are some of the actions they're taking? What does it look like in 2021?

I think we want to be extremely optimistic for lots of reasons. What we're seeing as we work on, what the boards of directors look like, that the women on the boards and those in nominating committees are playing a much stronger role. We are looking at CEOs, as we saw with Jane Fraser's announcement and other CEO announcements, where the CEO stands up and becomes the advocate for a strong woman, either in their pipeline, in the executive role, or bringing in a strong woman CEO. And we even saw that with UPS bringing from Home Depot a woman that Carol Tomei last year who was cfo, that could serve in a strong position already on the board of Home Depot, on UPS and moving her up, there is real optimism. But there is the pressure, because every study shows that we are seeing women CEOs more profitable as we see more CEOs named at every step more collegial in terms of the flexibility of bringing and retaining talent. And what we're seeing is more force in making sure that the slates have, across the board in the executive suite, have, have at least one woman and one woman or person of color. And it is the new day as we see the change numbers. And as we go and look at 2022, we look at the goals we have set with Catalyst C200 and Ascend for 2025, when we truly want to see 15% of women. So we've got giant steps to take. And with those 25% women of color. And so coupled with our action and with us making announcements and celebrating those changes. And so it was great when today it was announced that Jane Fraser at Citigroup's strong CEO was basically announced the first audit ever for DE and I. And we saw that Karen lynch of CVS strong woman CEO who has come in this year, was named number one woman CEO by Fortune. And when we look at all these changes and we hear from all the CEOs and the boards, we have a lot of reason to be optimistic, but we're watching it with intentionality.

It's interesting when you talk about both the role of the boards and the trends, because our monthly board report, as you know, which we report every month on the women that are appointed to the boards of public companies for the month of September, women comprise 46% of those positions which is moving closer to parity every day. But we're also seeing that women are self identifying and women of color are stepping up and comprising almost 30% of those appointments. How intentional is the WBC being about looking at women of color, the trends and building out that pipeline to ensure that more people like the Sunda Brown Duckett are taking the reins.

We're so pleased to make DEI a first priority as most of the companies are. So the good news after Black Lives Matter and all the attention on private sector leadership has meant a new focus on the vitality of women. And you and I also know the pride we've got of the women's organizations who are collaborating for change. So as we've looked at the role of boards and we look at the 16 board organizations that are part of WBC, we look at the investment bankers, the blackrocks, the state streets of that have demanded they won't invest. The investment firms that say they won't invest without at least one woman Nasdaq who this year said unless you get a woman on the board, you can't be within Nasdaq and you've got certain times to do it. And we saw not only California, but you know, it's really super. Gwen, you and I shared the other day when we ran into the secretary of state of Maine. Their legislature have passed now a mandatory on women and boards and leadership. So so goes the US goes Europe word about even as you know for women CEOs they also in Great Britain even though they have a 20 by 25 goal to get 25 women out of 100 as CEOs they've only got 8% as we've got 8%. So we know that together as we watch these trend lines and watch succession planning and hear the strong voices of the Indra Nuis and the others that are speaking out and saying this is the time and with it let's just look at the elevation, the leadership and the profitability of these companies run by women and the super board leadership that you and we are celebrating and and yes that drive to parity. So very exciting to see these companies really announce and sometimes we don't know. We heard from Mary Barra and thrilled that she was not only honored by us but the first woman CEO of the business Roundtable that sends a message of strength. And with that what we're seeing is these other women really a clarion call to support that change. So let's just remain optimistic and focused.

So we're going to switch to a Little bit of how we get there, because you've mentioned a couple things, right? The commitment of the CEO, the role of the board, intentionality. What are some of the other steps that companies and organizations can take to ensure that we have more women CEOs. What are these steps that organizations need to take?

Well, we, as we look at the whole C suite, know that you've got to give women into P and L roles, and you've got to trust they can do that and make sure that we are really looking at their ability to run strong business units. For sure. What we're looking forward to is to see the elevation of some of the business groups with it. Let's just throw in the subject of purposeful companies, and we're putting a lot of attention on that. We're part of a pride to see a lot of male CEOs speaking out for purpose. But so many women in the pipe ring knowing that if you've got purpose and if our purpose really includes gender and diversity, the women leaderships are strong and they are demanding, and that's what talent wants and we look for, you're not going to make that strong workforce without the new flexibility and without the clarion message to really give opportunity to women and women of color. It is the new day that we're seeing as we measure all those action steps for the sea change.

Another thing I heard throughout this, and I know that it's something important, is working together, women and men, to make this change happen and working across kind of all groups in the company and standing with the men as allies, we call it ally of her at the WBC, to really make that change happen.

100%, Gwen, is. We cannot applaud so many CEOs enough for what they're saying as they talk about their data on their boards and their C suites. And you and I learn this every day because as General Motors and Mary announced, 54% women on the board and the commitment to really continue to drive and drive other companies. You know, we were on the phone with a board member of Autodesk, a woman's CEO that is running nearly $2 billion on the board. And she said, did we realize that Autodesk has about 65% women on their board? So we must show role models and continue to celebrate those that are drivers of change. And with that will come so many advocates, including those male CEOs and the organizations and the investment banks and. And what we're seeing with venture firms demanding that we're seeing this Progress on women CEOs and women on boards.

I guess when we want to close our short lunchtime LinkedIn Live, what's our call to action? What do we want to ask the audience? Individual and organizations?

We want each of you to determine where you can play with the sisterhood, with the brotherhood. Because we will get to 15% women CEOs, we will get to parity on boards. And that is a sea change. And we will see best companies change their workforce and their talent. Because unless they offer the kind of flexibility and the pay parity. So to see these companies coming out, whether it be Salesforce or Costco or Procter and Gamble announcing they're at pay parity or beyond, as we learned from Procter and Gamble, when they looked at their 110% of pay parity, it is the companies that are developing that strength in the pipeline. They're celebrating their C suite and they're looking at that pipeline to CEO leadership at every level. So how proud we are to look all the way from entrepreneurs up through private companies to S and P Russell and the Fortune, to know every sector is playing their part in this change towards gender equity. And so humbled that we can all play and call on everybody to take your action as you are playing that role, to see the numbers change as we report on boards every month and as we report on co changes as they're made. And once a year in this report and tell us what you're doing. Keep educating each other. Thank you to all the organizations for their forums that they're holding on these subjects of women's leadership in business. And let's focus on how great we can all be to play an activist role in this change. Gwen?

Thank you, Edie. And to bring us back to the report, I want to thank committee of 200 ascending catalysts. I want to say to the audience, please read the report with the insights, the 10 steps it will take to get women cos into power. And to thank all of you for participating, engaging. As Edie says, what we're trying to do is to get everybody to not only speak advocate, but also to act. And we salute the women on the list and the company leadership, including boards leading the way. As Edie mentions, it's especially fitting that women are leading both NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. Adina Friedman and Stacey and Cunningham, respectively. And that just a few weeks ago, Mary Barr, the CEO of General Motors, was named the first woman chair of the Business Roundtable. But most importantly, join us to hear more from our experts, our thought leaders understand the data the tools and the best practices for driving gender equity, parity and diversity and join the wbc. This is all we have time for today. Our next show will be November 11th. We will speak with women CEOs in our network, but invite your followers and your friends to join us. And remember to visit us at our website to keep up to date on the progress of the movement and follow us on social media, bccollaborative on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. And most importantly, have a wonderful afternoon and let's keep pushing for progress, positive change, and ensuring that our leadership is as equitable and diverse as possible. Have a great afternoon.

Thank you Gwen. Thank you everybody. And each of you, think about supporting three women every day and women of color in this process and call on us and share with us what you're doing. Thank you Gwen.

Thank you. Edie.