OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, social impact venture Him For Her announced a significant milestone in its efforts to accelerate diversity on corporate boards. As a direct result of the organization's introductions, women have been appointed to 100 board seats. Forty percent of those appointments went to women of color.
The only organization focused on introducing companies to board-ready women at scale, Him For Her connects CEOs, investors, and board members with its network of more than 6,000 board-ready women, of whom more than a third identify as women of color.
Further demonstrating how Him For Her is impacting and accelerating diversity on boards, a deeper look at the 100 appointments reveals 50% of the newly appointed are first time directors, 53% are full-time executives, 10% are first-generation college graduates, and they hail from 25 different U.S. metropolitan areas. Seventy-two percent were appointed to private company board seats, while 8 were appointed to companies that went on to IPO.
“The health of our society depends upon the full participation of women in all rooms of power, and the boardroom is the most important room in corporations,” said Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO of Him For Her. “Every one of these board appointments has the potential to influence outcomes for thousands of stakeholders – not only investors but also customers, employees and their families.”
The boardroom gender gap is a network problem, despite being painted as a pipeline problem. Companies typically find board members through personal networks from which women and especially women of color are typically underrepresented. According to the 2021 Him For Her & Crunchbase Study Of Gender Diversity On Private Company Boards, only 14 percent of all board seats among the most heavily funded private companies are held by women, and just 3 percent by women of color, even though research shows diverse boards outperform their peers.
Born as a project out of the Aspen Institute, Him For Her has created a frictionless approach to bridge the gap between those in the boardroom today and the women who seek to bring their expertise and experience to corporate governance. The company connects CEOs and current board members with women interested in board service through a series of executive roundtables and curated board referrals which it offers free of charge. To date, Him For Her has partnered with over 100 leading private equity and venture capital firms to extend networks and make board introductions to their portfolio companies.
“Every company can benefit from more diversity of thought in the boardroom and yet many struggle to find candidates. The biggest obstacle is giving women visibility for board opportunities. Him For Her has solved that problem,” said Brad Feld, partner and co-founder of venture capital firm Foundry. “We've seen first-hand the uniquely effective model that Him For Her has developed. The organization made it incredibly easy to find exceptional candidates that we may have never met through our personal networks. As a result, our portfolio companies are stronger for our partnership.”
About Him For Her
Him For Her is a social impact venture aimed at accelerating diversity on corporate boards. To bridge the network gap responsible for the sparsity of women in the boardroom, Him For Her engages business luminaries and partners with leading private equity and venture capital firms to connect the world’s most talented “Hers” to board service. Drawing from its ever-growing referral-only talent network of 6000+ women, a third of whom are women of color, Him For Her introduces board-building companies to board-ready candidates. More than one hundred board appointments have directly resulted from Him For Her introductions to date. Together with guest hosts like Scott Cook, Carmine Di Sibio, Robin Washington, and Eric Yuan, Him For Her also convenes roundtable discussions that extend networks for CEOs and current and aspiring board members. A 501c3 corporation, Him For Her operates through the generosity of its founding partners GV, IVP, L Catterton, Mayfield, Silver Lake Partners, Softbank, Starboard Value and Tiger Global Impact Ventures, and supporters like Brad Feld & Amy Batchelor, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Weiner, Nasdaq and many others.
