Unmasking the Secret Powerhouse Behind Fortune 500 Giants – You Won’t Believe Who!

Until recently, for a short time Google The search would have led you to Dolores Wharton, a prominent foundation executive who was married to the deceased Clifton Wharton Jr., former chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, CEO of TIAAand university president.

However, this information turned out to be false, as found out by two years ago Black women in committees (BWOB), a networking and board training organization. As one member found out, the first black woman to serve on a Fortune 500 board was actually Patricia Roberts Harris, the late American attorney, cabinet secretary, and diplomat who was elected to the board IBM in 1971. (Wharton had joined the committees from Kellogg and Phillips Petroleum in 1976.)

Now Harris’ achievement – breaking into the pinnacle of corporate power once reserved for white men – is not only recognized by the world’s search engines, it’s celebrated On board, a new documentary about Harris and the women who followed suit, often as the first or only black woman in the boardroom.

Merline Saintil, co-founder of BWOB and co-executive producer and co-producer of On board, says the film is part of it a broader mission Normalize black women’s corporate success and show other black leaders that there is a way to the boardroom because someone went first.

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Patricia Roberts Harris, that person, has been number one throughout her career.

When she died in 1985, obituaries described the remarkable course of her life. She was born into a working class family in Illinois; attended Howard University on a scholarship and graduated summa cum laude; and worked his way into DC’s inner circle. Friends and colleagues described her to him New York Times as a lawyer with a “steel trap spirit” and as a confident leader with a certain “duality” – tough, sharp and charming at the same time.

Harris graduated at the top of her class from George Washington University in 1960 with her law degree. When she got IBM’s call, she was a corporate attorney, dean of the Howard University School of Law and organizer of the Democratic Party, co-chair of the National Women’s Committee for Civil Rights, and the first black woman Become an ambassador (to Luxembourg). IBM wasn’t their only chairman; She later worked at Scott Paper and Chase Manhattan Bank.

Harris left IBM as a director in 1977 when she was appointed to the US Cabinet, serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration and later as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

Prior to her appointment as HUD, she attended a Senate committee hearing that resulted in a finding an exchange that became part of their legacy. When a congressman suggested that Harris, who has now become one of DC’s elite, might not be “of the people,” she responded vigorously.

“Senator, to say that I am not for and for the people is to show a misunderstanding of who I am and where I come from,” Harris said. “If my life has any meaning at all, it is that those who started out as outcasts may end up being part of the system.”

This clip helps with anchoring and drifting On board, which debuted at New York’s Tribeca Festival this week. At 45 minutes, it skillfully blends Harris’ story with that of BWOB, which was started almost by accident three years ago by two friends: Saintil, a former CTO and COO from Silicon Valley who now serves on the boards of Rocket Lab, GitLab and three sits at other companies, and Robin Washington, former CFO of Gilead Sciences and director Foreclosurealphabet and Honeywell.

In 2020, they talked about it the increase in inquiries for black board members after the assassination of George Floyd, when major American firms pledged to improve their company’s racing record and diversify their boards. (Although gender diversity has improved in recent decades, white women, who now hold about a third of board seats, have benefited the most. This summer, black women held just 3% of all board seats on the Fortune 500 and 4% on the S&P 500 director posts.)

Seeking to better themselves, directors did what directors do: they looked inward and looked for black directors in other companies who might be recruited. Saintil and Washington were inundated with requests but declined. They had reached their capacity limit. “The way it works: when you’re on board, you get the calls. If you’re not on board, you won’t get any calls,” says Saintil. “We were like, ‘Hey, we know amazing black women who just don’t get calls. Can we do something about it?’”

Soon after, the couple organized one zoom Called 18 black female executives that organically grew into a formal business. Today, BWOB has more than 200 members worldwide and more than 30 women on the boards of public companies.

Shannon Nash, CFO of Wing, a drone delivery company and Alphabet subsidiary, was among the scared faces at that Zoom meetup. Her idea was to hire Atlanta-based film director Deborah Riley Draper. their documentaries Shed light on black history and make a short film about BWOB’s mission. The multi-hyphenated executive – lawyer, accountant, film producerand board member of SoFi Bank and two other firms – shared her proposal with Saintil and Draper in Fall 2021, during a short trip that began as a vacation.

During the spontaneous offsite, the women searched Google for the first black woman on a board and were led there wharton. But just two weeks later, Nash learned from Barry Lawson Williams — the retired founder of investment and consulting firm Williams Pacific Ventures, who has served on more than 18 public boards — that Harris was the real trailblazer. He knew because his mother idolized Harris and followed every step of her career.

The revelation gave the women further resolve: they needed to correct the neglected history of black women in business leadership. Nash would be co-executive producer and producer of the documentary. “We often don’t include or focus black women in the history of big business, the boardroom and capitalism, and the interesting thing is that black women have been an important part of the American economy for as long as there has been an American economy there.” says Draper, the film’s director.

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While the documentary doesn’t detail Harris’ experiences in corporate boardrooms, it does offer a broader story of board diversity, honoring 50 of the women who followed Harris in the ’70s and ’80s to the present day, and Black women directors at companies like… interviewed Zillowsymbotically and Williams Sonoma.

This long-term view helps put the current climate – with its anti-woke boycotts – in perspective. Saintil says the trend toward board diversification will not reverse. A board snapshot just published by Deloitte shows a sharp rise in Black directors, who now hold 12% of Fortune 500 company board seats, with Black women seeing the largest increase (a 47% increase) in new hires since 2020. “It may not be the way it is.” In recent years, post-George Floyd, the idea that we would turn back and not continue to look at diversity as an asset and a criterion by which to look at things is not possible ‘ Saintil says. Companies recognize that diversity in boardrooms leads to better performance and better decisions, and groups like BWOB are debunking the myth that there aren’t enough black executives with the right experience to be directors.

In the past, the hurdles that kept black women out of CFO and CEO positions meant that there were no black female directors, as boards traditionally consisted only of executives who held those roles. Today, Saintil says, more black executives hold such titles, and boards are hiring directors from a variety of professional backgrounds. “Now you have your technologists, product people, marketing heads, CHROs, and a larger group of C-suite executives,” she notes. But black women still lack the social capital to serve on boards. They need introductions, strong networks, golf games with CEOs (which BWOB arranged), and ongoing support once they become board members, Saintil says.

Like Harris, the “not in the self-promotion businessAccording to her contemporaries, Saintil admits she doesn’t love the spotlight of her new role. At first, she balked at the thought of making a documentary—about the hair, the makeup, the press appearances—until she considered the impact the film might have. “I know that we will inspire people to think more broadly so that they can achieve this path. “We’re going to educate people about what boards do,” she says, “we’re going to excite and inspire people.”