20 women in finance you should add to your company's board
Finding women to add to a company's board is even harder since the job listings aren't posted publicly and advertised widely to attract a diverse network, says Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO of Joyus and founder of theBoardlist.
"When a board seat opens, the typical process is that a CEO will turn to their few, most trusted peers for recommendations of potential board members, who in turn give recommendations of their few, most trusted peers," Singh Cassidy told Business Insider.
"Because our closest networks are usually very similar to ourselves, this process doesn't necessarily yield a lot of diversity — not only of gender or race, but educational background, functional expertise or industry. While there may be no intent to actively exclude any group, this lack of diversity in networks means that opportunities aren't exposed to a broader pool of talent."
She started theBoardlist, a LinkedIn-like network that specifically recommends highly-qualified women in tech to take seats on company boards, to abolish any excuse that there aren't highly-qualified women able to join a company's board.
Here's the list of the 20 of the top women in finance and what expertise each woman can add to a startup:
20. Mindy Mount
Current role: Board member at Technicolor and The Learning Care Group
Experience: Mount cut her teeth leading mergers and acquisitions for Morgan Stanley. Mount then worked at Time Warner, AOL UK, and Microsoft, where she served as CFO for both its Online Services division and Entertainment and Device division. Most recently, Mount was president of Jawbone, where she stayed for nine months before leaving in 2014. Since then, she's divided her time on two boards, as well as serving on the audit committee for the University of Wisconsin Foundation, her alma mater.
Find her on: LinkedIn
19. Melissa Birge
Most recent role: Former CFO at Kayak
Experience: Birge is currently a board member and chair of the audit committee at Showroomprive.com, a French fashion and technology company. She was most recently CFO of Kayak until February 2016. Prior to her time at the travel company, she also spent three years as VP of Finance at Potbelly Sandwich Works.
Find her on: LinkedIn
18. Julie Bradley
Most recent role: Former CFO at TripAdvisor
Experience: Currently a board member at WayFair and Blue Apron, Bradley left TripAdvisor after four years in November 2015. She has also previously served as CFO of Art Technology Group and VP of Finance at Akamai Technologies. Prior to Akamai, Bradley spent over seven years at Deloitte & Touche.
Find her on: LinkedIn
17. Kathleen Phillips
Current role: CFO at Zillow
Experience: Phillips is currently the CFO for Zillow, where she’s been since 2010, previously serving the company as COO and general counsel before that. Phillips also served as general counsel for several consumer tech companies. She also serves on the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago Law School.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
16. Kim Jabal
Current role: CFO at Weebly
Experience: Currently a board member of FedEx and Bring Change 2 Mind, Jabal is also the CFO at website startup Weebly.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
15. Elaine Paul
Current role: CFO at Hulu
Experience: Paul came to Hulu in 2013 from Walt Disney Company, where she previously served as SVP of corporate strategy and VP of business development for its internet group. At Disney, she oversaw various M&A, strategy, and growth initiatives, including Disney’s investment in Hulu and the merger of Disney-owned joint ventures A&E and Lifetime.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
14. Barbara Landes
Most recent role: Former CFO at PBS
Experience: Before she left on January 1, 2017, Landes had served as the CFO and Treasurer of PBS for 13 years. She came to the broadcast network after holding two senior executive roles at AOL, and a variety of CFO positions at other networks in New York and New Jersey.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
13. Karen Boone
Current role: Co-president and CFO at Restoration Hardware
Experience: At Restoration Hardware, Boone holds the titles of co-president, CFO, and Chief Administrative Officer, overseeing everything related to finance, human resources, and investor relations at the company. She joined the company in 2012 after spending 15 years at Deloitte.
Find her on: LinkedIn
12. Sarah Friar
Current role: CFO at Square
Experience: In addition to being on the board of New Relic, Friar is the CFO at Square, a company she oversaw go public in 2015. She had joined the company in 2012 after a year spent as the SVP of Finance & Strategy for Salesforce. Before that, she spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs in various roles.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
11. Lisa Serwin
Current role: Co-founder of C-Sweetener
Experience: Serwin has had a career that's touched most positions in the C-suite, from CFO at VentureBeat to CEO at AppMedicine to COO at Xfire. Most recently, she combined those talents and launched C-Sweetener, a new nonprofit that helps match women to mentors in healthcare so they can thrive in C-suite leadership positions.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
10. Elizabeth (Betsey) Nelson
Current role: On the board of companies like Pandora, Zendesk, and Nokia
Experience: Nelson is a legend in Silicon Valley for her working helping build and scale companies. She's currently on the boards of DAI, Pandora, Zendesk, and Nokia. But that's just a small part of her experience. Previous public company board experiences includes Ancestry.com, SuccessFactors, Autodesk, and CNET Networks. She also spent nearly a decade as the EVP and CFO at Macromedia until it was acquired by Adobe for $3.4 billion.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
9. Cathie Lesjak
Current role: CFO at HP
Experience: Lesjak has worked for with HP for the last thirty years and has held the role as CFO of HP since 2007. (That included a brief stint as interim CEO for three months in 2010). Outside of the company, she has been on the board for SunPower since 2013 and is on the board of RAFT (Resource Area for Teaching).
8. Cipora Herman
Most recent role: Former CFO at San Francisco 49ers
Experience: The first female CFO in the team's history, Herman joined the 49ers in 2012 and spent four seasons with the team before leaving in April 2016. Before she made the leap into sports, she'd spent years in Silicon Valley as the VP of finance at Facebook and Yahoo. Herman has now been serving on the board of Mindbody since October.
Find her on: LinkedIn or Twitter
7. Colette Kress
Current role: EVP and CFO at Nvidia
Experience: Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after two years as an SVP and finance lead at Cisco. Before that, Kress spent 13 years at Microsoft in a variety of roles, including four years as CFO of the server and tools division.
Find her on: LinkedIn
6. Dana Evan
Current role: Partner at IconVentures
Experience: A CFO turned venture capitalist, Dana Evan joined Icon Ventures as a partner in 2013. She had previously spent 12 years as CFO of VeriSign, leading it through all of its financings to an IPO. She currently is on the boards of Box, Criteo, Everyday Health, Proofpoint, Farfetch, Linden Labs, and Survey Monkey.
5. Helen Riley
Current role:
Experience: Riley's job over the last three years has been to oversee the financials of Google's moonshot programs like its self-driving car projects or balloon powered internet. But she's been at Google for over a decade, also holding roles like senior finance director for global marketing and G&A, which oversaw real estate and human resources. Earlier in her career, Riley also served as a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group in San Francisco and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in London.
Find her on: LinkedIn
4. Kelly Kramer
Current role: EVP and CFO at Cisco
Experience: In the last five years, Kramer has been promoted from an SVP of Corporate Finance to its CFO in January 2015. Prior to Cisco, she was VP and CFO of GE Healthcare’s Healthcare Systems business, having worked at GE on-and-off since 1989. She's also currently on the board at Gilead Sciences and City Year in Silicon Valley.
Find her on: LinkedIn
3. Marjorie Sennett
Current role:
Experience: Sennett spent eight years at Farallon Capital Management, where she was managing director, senior research analyst and a consultant. She left in 2009, and in 2014, joined the board of directors at QuinStreet, where she's been for the last three years. Before her time at Fallaron, she served as SVP and CFO of eGroups, which she sold to Yahoo, and was CFO at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, which she took public in 1992.
Find her on: LinkedIn
2. Saori Casey
Current role: VP Corporate Financial Planning at Apple
Experience: Casey has spent the last five years as the VP of Corporate Financial Planning, where she's in charge of everything from demand forecasting to investment allocations. Prior to Apple, she spent 15 years at Cisco where she was a divisional CFO and served as a VP of Finance.
Find her on: LinkedIn
1. Amy Hood
Current role: CFO at Microsoft
Experience: Hood has spent over a decade at Microsoft, starting out as a director of investor relations in 2002. She continued to rise through the ranks, helping to oversee the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer, before being promoted to CFO of all of Microsoft in 2013. Those acquisitions pale in comparison though to the $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn that Hood helped pull together in 2016.
Find her on: LinkedIn
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