JUNETEENTH DATA: Black board directors and the gaps of power

Live from juneteenthdatapalooza, it’s yet another Manic Monday edition of Business Pants. Joined by the Lord of the BS. In today’s mushy cucumber called Juneteenth, 2023: a Juneteenth  board of directors history lesson and a big beautiful pile of juneteenth BS data!

DAMION1

1. The only business news Juneteenth headline I could find: The out-of-office message you need if your company finally caught up with the times and gave you Juneteenth off

1. Juneteenth recognizes the end of slavery in the US on June 19, 1865.

2. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

3. I’m not sure what OUR problem is

4. Thanks for your email! As with a growing number of companies across the country, Insider Inc. has closed today to observe Juneteenth. I encourage you to read the linked article on the holiday if you'd like to know why this decision was made and why it's so important to the company and its staff. I'll be sure to respond to your message when I'm back in the office on Tuesday, 6/20.

5. Big-name companies like Twitter and Nike declared Juneteenth a company holiday in 2020. Other organizations like Microsoft have designated it a "day of listening, learning, and engagement" and canceled meetings.

2. Meet the little-known first Black woman to sit on a Fortune 500 corporate board

1. Until recently, a quick Google search would have directed you to Dolores Wharton, a prominent foundation executive who was married to the late Clifton Wharton Jr., former Rockefeller Foundation chair, CEO of TIAA, and university president.

1. elected to the board of the Michigan Bell Telephone Company in 1974, as well as the boards of the Kellogg Company and the Phillips Petroleum Company in 1976. Wharton initiated and chaired both company’s first social responsibility committees. She was also the first woman

2. But that information turned out to be incorrect, according to findings unearthed two years ago by Black Women on Boards (BWOB), a networking and board training organization. The first Black woman on a Fortune 500 board, one member discovered, was actually Patricia Roberts Harris, the late American lawyer, cabinet secretary, and diplomat, who was elected to the board of IBM in 1971.

3. Now Harris’s feat—breaking into the apex of corporate power once reserved for white men—is not only recognized by the world’s search engine, it’s also celebrated in OnBoard, a new documentary about Harris and the women who have followed suit, often as the first or only Black woman in the boardroom.

4. Merline Saintil, cofounder of BWOB and co–executive producer and coproducer of OnBoard, says the film is part of a wider mission to normalize Black women’s corporate success and show fellow Black executives that there’s a pathway to the boardroom because someone went first.

5. Harris graduated from the George Washington University Law School, first in her class, in 1960. By the time she got the call from IBM, she had been a corporate lawyer, the dean of Howard University School of Law, an organizer for the Democratic Party, cochair of the National Women’s Committee for Civil Rights, and the first Black woman to become an ambassador (to Luxembourg). IBM was not her only board; she later served on those of Scott Paper and Chase Manhattan Bank.

6. In 2020, they found themselves talking about the surge in requests for Black board members following George Floyd’s murder, as major American firms pledged to fix their company’s race record and diversify their boards. (Although gender diversity has improved over the past few decades, white women—now holding about one-third of board seats—have benefited most. That summer, Black women held only 3% of all Fortune 500 board seats, and 4% of S&P 500 directorships.)

3. BS Juneteenth data-palooza

1. Overall

1. 11% black directors (40% women)...US average 13% (but not sure what that is in S&P500 jurisdictions)

2. 78% white directors (31% women).... US average non-hispanic whites is 59%

2. Influence (average)

1. black influence=6%

2. hispanic influence=7%

3. asian influence=8%

4. middle eastern influence=9%

5. minus black influence=9%

6. white influence=10% (white male=11%)

3. Education

1. Elite school (yes)

1. black=46%

2. white=41%

2. Advanced degree (yes)

1. black=71%

2. white=62%

3. Must be more educated

4. Roles

1. Has been ceo

1. black=39%

2. white=60%

2. influencer chair role (yes)

1. black=24%

2. white=34%

3. founder/ceo/family (yes)

1. black=1%

2. white=9%

5. Performance

1. white= .523/.507/.490/.511/.593

2. black= .512/.487/.484/.509/.562

3. overall/earnings/tst/carbon/controversy

4. Glass cliff?

MATT1

Board Sabermetrics does Juneteenth better than anyone else

• We have diversity data for 5,253 directorships of the S&P 500

• 4,581 people - average of 1.2 boards per person

• Here’s your recycle rate by race and gender:

• White Male: 1.16 boards per

• Hispanic Male: 1.23

• Asian Male: 1.14

• Middle Eastern Male: 1.05

• Black Male: 1.35 - most recycled men!

• White Female: 1.22

• Hispanic Female: 1.31

• Asian Female: 1.11

• Middle Eastern Female: 1.00

• Black Female: 1.38 - most recycled overall!

• Power concentrations

• 30% of white men have 5% or less influence

• 44% of white women

• 49% of black men

• 51% of black women!