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CASE STUDY ON MODERN LEADERSHIP

Former Intuit Executive Makes the Case for Taking a Chance on First Timers

On a beautiful summer evening in 2018 at Meadowood Napa Valley, I was seated next to Laurie Yoler for dinner as part of Diligent’s Directors’ Experience — a phenomenal 1.5-day event centered on connecting board members from around the world. The event program tackles many different board governance issues, but at its heart is the ability to connect with a diverse group of other directors to discuss how we can each make our respective boards and the organizations we support as effective as possible. Under a star-lit Napa sky and with the help of some unforgettable Napa wines, I got to know Laurie, her husband Ben, and hear more about her path as a female executive in technology to a public company board member. Also at the event was Heidi Roizen, an accomplished venture partner and board member whom I first met in 2013 when we both led workshops at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business to support their Women in Leadership conference for MBA students. Over the years, Heidi graciously took my phone calls on career advice, so it was a delight to reconnect with her again and learn that she also knew Laurie through their board roles for the autonomous vehicle company Zoox.

Fast forward through the year following that event. Heidi, Laurie, and I stayed connected through forums, like SVDX, where we discuss current issues and network with other board members of Silicon Valley companies. At one such event, Laurie shared with me her excitement that Zoox had just found a fantastic new CEO — who also happened to be both female and Black, like myself. According to Center for Employment Equity data, Black women make up 0.4% of executives in Silicon Valley, so Laurie’s news caught my attention. She informed me that the CEO Search Committee, which also included Heidi, recruited Aicha Evans as Zoox’s new CEO “...because she was the best possible CEO candidate for the job – not the best female candidate or the best Black candidate or the best Black female candidate.”  

Her appointment at Zoox came on the heels of the unexpected firing of one of its co-founders and in a time where the company needed a leader with executive and operational experience to scale the business to its next stage of growth, according to TechCrunch. Aicha was serving as Intel’s chief strategy officer at the time, with a long history of leadership in Silicon Valley, but she had no prior CEO experience. While I didn’t know a lot about Aicha when Laurie first mentioned her to me, I did get a chance to connect with her at the 2019 Fortune Brainstorm Tech, where she spoke on mobility trends. Aicha is definitely a force and having more insight into her vision as Zoox CEO left me inspired. What a coup for the Zoox team! 

Certainly, Aicha’s appointment in January 2019 occurred before the topic of racial injustice became as pervasive as it is of late. Now, we are seeing many companies declare or reaffirm intentions to achieve better diversity and inclusion, particularly at the leadership level. These declarations are important, but what has always resonated with me is leading with intention and then following those intentions with acts that are measurable. From an organizational perspective, I am encouraged by Diligent’s efforts with the recently launched Modern Leadership platform to source board member and c-suite roles for diverse candidates. This collaborative partnership approach calls on its 700,000 board and executive users to nominate rising diverse talent for inclusion in its Director Network database that is used by those same board members and executives to help build candidate pools. Diligent is also working with private equity firms and search consultants to make open board roles visible to this diverse group of rising directors. Accretive to the Diligent platform is partnering with organizations such as theBoardlist Athena Alliance, Him For Her, and How Women Lead, which are focused on accelerating gender diversity in the boardroom. Equally essential, I recommend engagement with the Executive Leadership Council, Latino Corporate Directors Association, Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity (The Boulé) Blacks on Boards initiative.  It also pays off to ask diverse candidates for referrals while casting a wide net.

On a personal level, I often hear a counterproductive notion that you need to have public company board experience to get on a public board. With this argument, we are passing by terrific candidates who haven’t had someone take a chance on them. In fact, only 27% of new S&P 500 board appointments last year went to first-timers. We are also limiting our ability to create a more diverse candidate pool for consideration. For example, only about 1% of S&P 500 CEOs are Black, yet 35% of S&P 500 board appointments last year went to current or former CEOs. 

Sometimes you can check every box and at the end of the day it still might not be enough. This is coming from a recent experience interviewing with a late-stage, venture-backed board on the east coast in the small business space (as a former exec at Intuit, I really understood the space). Technology and operations background chops? Check! Previous board experience? Check! I’ll spare you the suspense...I checked every single box of the spec and even the nice-to-have requirements, like cybersecurity oversight. But after a 4-month interview process — even participating in an actual board meeting — the reason given for the rejection was that I wasn’t a “tech founder CEO.” And yes, it is completely fine if I was not deemed to be a fit for this board, but truthfully, I am left wondering if I was just a Rooney Rule board candidate. At the beginning of the interview process, it was already very obvious that I wasn’t a “tech founder CEO.” It’s not lost on me that I would have also been their first Black board member.

The reason I share this less than desired outcome is because Zoox’s board could have used the same logic to appoint a new CEO and take the helm from the founders. As leaders, I applaud Laurie and Heidi for spearheading an exhaustive and diverse search, one that reached outside their typical networks to find the best possible candidate. And once they found her, they didn’t let her lack of being an experienced CEO be a bottleneck to her landing the role. Ultimately, Amazon acquired Zoox for $1.2B a few weeks ago, a tremendous outcome for the first-time CEO and the company.

After the public announcement, I congratulated Laurie with a heartfelt thank you for giving an extremely qualified leader the opportunity to shine. Laurie’s response was gracious as always, “Aicha has been a tremendous leader for Zoox, and I hope will continue to be for many years to come.” Nothing more needed to be said. Many emerging c-suite executives and board members continue to ask the decision-makers (yes, that’s you and me) to take a chance on them being the first. The outcomes may pleasantly surprise you! 

written by Merline Saintil