FirstBoard Curates Qualified Board-Ready Women Executives

FirstBoard Addresses Challenge of Matching Qualified Women Executives with Board of Director Opportunities

SAN FRANCISCO – May 19, 2020 – FirstBoard.io, today announced the launch of its inaugural cohort of technology operating leaders dedicated to making it easy for organizations to identify qualified, board-ready women leaders.

While the presence of women directors has increased, the 2019 Gender Diversity Index demonstrates that 311 companies of the Russell 3000 Index still don’t have women on their boards. Further, according to a recent University of California-Davis report, there is an undeniable correlation between companies with a higher percentage of women executives and board members, and their self-reported return on assets and equity as compared to companies with fewer women in leadership positions.

The challenge isn’t in getting organizations to embrace the idea of diversity in their leadership teams. The challenge CEOs and chairpersons face when filling open board seats is in identifying qualified pools of vetted and board-ready women leaders.

The brainchild of Rita Scroggin, a leader in executive search, FirstBoard directly addresses the challenge.

Helping Boards Quickly Identify Vetted and Qualified Women Candidates  

Unlike other women-oriented board organizations, FirstBoard does not provide coaching or training. The company’s sole focus is to curate a group of operating leaders and match them with open board opportunities at venture portfolio companies.

Founding members include 18 board-ready women leaders – each with a proven track record with multimillion-dollar exits and IPOs for brands including Ariba, Github, FireEye, Jasper, Pivotal Software, Salesforce, and Yubico.

“Operating expertise at the board level is critical during these challenging times. Boards are looking for proven leaders, experienced in driving next-level revenue in times of disruption. Our founding members bring this much-desired track record of managing growth and transformation through economic downturns and market disruptions,” shares FirstBoard Founder, Rita Scroggin. “FirstBoard is the first organization to partner with venture capitalists, private equity firms, and portfolio companies to match vetted women candidates with open positions.”

Each cohort member has over twenty years of experience and has been selected based on their: functional, domain, and scale expertise. This curated group of c-suite executives spans across engineering, product, marketing, and sales, both at startups and publicly traded technology companies.

Partners and supporters include Steve Singh, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, Alidad Vakili, Corporate Attorney at K&L Gates, and Armineh Baghoomian, Managing Director at Partners for Growth. Accomplished board members and mentors to the cohort include Sheryle Bolton, Michael Grant, Julie Cullivan, and Christine Heckart.