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| Best Practices |
Diverse Approaches
Suzanne McGee
03/01/2005
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Idealism and civil rights have given way to capitalist practicalities and shareholder responsibility. CEOs and boards can no longer simply welcome a token woman or African-American, then declare their leadership “diverse.” Recruiters, directors and CEOs agree that building boardroom diversity is becoming a natural outcome of looking for the best possible candidate to fill a particular slot. Some board recruiting committees are mandating that each search for a new director include—or even be restricted to—women and minority candidates. Like most executive recruiters, Daum maintains a separate list of thousands of names for these occasions.
When Larry Johnston joined Albertsons, the Boise, Idaho-based retailer, as chief executive in April 2001, he did not set out to be the only company in Fortune’s Global 200 list with more women than men on its board. Of Albertsons’ 11 directors, six are women and some of those six are African-American and Hispanic. But the 56-year-old Johnston insists that this demographic anomaly is simply what occurred when he sought out the best candidates with the expertise the company needed. “We went looking for a corporate governance expert, and we found Bonnie Hill, the former chair of the Times Mirror Foundation, and a real expert on these issues,” he says. When Albertsons went in search of a retail leader, it found Beth Pritchard, former president and CEO of Bath & Body Works and a director of book giant Borders.
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