BizTimes Milwaukee presents its inaugural showcase of Milwaukee area Notable Women on Corporate Boards, spotlighting the valuable contributions and insights that they provide to the businesses whose boards they sit on and the additional contributions that they make to the community.
Author: Pat Ackerman, Chair of Milwaukee Women inc and Senior Vice President at A.O. Smith Corporation
The leaders spotlighted on the following pages were nominated by their peers and showcase the diversity of company leaders and corporate board membership in our market. Their leadership is setting an example to shape a better future for our region.
One of the outcomes of a year unlike any other is a renewed focus on diversity and inclusion. While COVID-19 may have changed how we conduct business today, and likely well into the future, the economic and social importance of advancing diverse leadership is more critical than ever. For example, research has found that companies with three or more women directors (the Power of 3) outperform those with lower representation (Catalyst). Moving the needle matters.
Since our founding in 2003, Milwaukee Women inc (MWi) has worked to achieve balanced representation of women on boards of directors to maximize the performance of Wisconsin businesses and change the face and quality of leadership in the Wisconsin business community. For 17 years, we have measured the gender board composition of Wisconsin companies; leveraging the mindset that what gets measured gets attention. Most recently, MWi reported 21.1% of directors on Wisconsin’s top 50 public company boards were women. Twenty-six percent of these companies have 3 or more women directors and 8% have four or more women board members. While there is still much work to be done, we are making slow, but steady, progress towards our goal of 25% by 2025.
This progress deserves celebrating, and MWi is proud to partner with BizTimes Milwaukee in recognizing the inaugural Notable Women on Corporate Boards in the Milwaukee area. The 11 women featured in the following pages, seven of whom are MWi members, are leaders in their organizations and fields. They are making critical decisions to support the success of their organizations’ futures. We congratulate each of them and applaud their companies for their work in advancing diverse and inclusive leadership.
To read the full article, click here. The feature starts on page 31.