About

Mission

Milwaukee Women inc is an organization of professional women determined to change the face and quality of leadership in the Wisconsin business community by increasing the number of women corporate directors.

Over the past 18 years, our annual research has shown a steady, but slow, upward trend in women on Wisconsin boards and a decline in companies with no female board members.

For example, the percentage of women on the boards of the top 50 Wisconsin public companies has increased from 9.3% in 2003 to 23.3% in 2021.

In 2021, fifteen women were added to Wisconsin public company boards resulting in 23.3% representation, surpassing 21.2% last year and the largest percentage since we began measuring. While this is encouraging, there is still much work to do.

MWi strives to achieve our mission through three pillars:

History

In 2002, a group of Milwaukee women leaders got together to discuss how to promote research and education concerning the value of diversity in corporate governance and management, and eliminating barriers to full inclusion of women in leadership positions. The group published its first research report in 2003. In 2010, Milwaukee Women inc (the “inc” stands for inclusive) was incorporated and was granted a 501(c)(3) exemption from the IRS. Since then, MWi has evolved to include more than 85 steering committee members and over 30 sponsoring organizations that support our goals, both financially and through their active participation.