Boards: California Insurance Diversity Task Force, Corporate Directors Forum, Kyoto Symposium Organization.

Annalisa Barrett is a senior advisor with the KPMG Board Leadership Center, where she informs corporate directors about emerging corporate governance issues and conducts research on board composition and governance practices. As a nationally recognized expert in corporate governance, she frequently speaks at conferences addressing issues important to corporate directors, governance professionals, investors, and other stakeholders. Barrett has been quoted on corporate governance in the New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, and the Financial Times, and her research has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Prior to joining KPMG, Barrett was founder and CEO of Board Governance Research, where she conducted research on topics including CEO succession planning, board governance at micro-cap companies, and director-age diversity. Her research on gender diversity of California company boards informed the deliberations of California Senate Bill 826, which was the first state law to require gender-diverse boards.

Previously, Barrett served as a senior advisor for ValueEdge Advisors, where she advised institutional investors on corporate governance matters, and as vice president and senior research associate at The Corporate Library, where she oversaw the firm’s corporate governance ratings and board effectiveness research. She was also a research consultant in the executive compensation practice at Towers Perrin (now Willis Towers Watson) and a senior tax consultant at Arthur Andersen.

Barrett was appointed by the California Insurance Commissioner to serve on the California Insurance Diversity Task Force. She also serves as board secretary of the Corporate Directors Forum (CDF), is a founding board member of the CDF Institute, and is a member of the Pacific Southwest–Southern California advisory board for the National Association of Corporate Directors, the Glass Lewis Research advisory council, the California Partners Project gender equity advisory council, and the Southern California advisory council of the Society for Corporate Governance. She also leads the San Diego BioDirector community. She is a member of Women Corporate Directors, the planning committee for the Summit for Workforce Valuation and Performance, and the Leadership Committee for San Diego 50/50 Women on Boards, having served as chair for several years. Barrett is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego Knauss School of Business, where she teaches graduate courses in corporate governance.

She currently serves as a member of the board of the Kyoto Symposium Organization, a Scott M. Johnson Fellow of the US–Japan Leadership Program, is a council leader on the US–Japan Council, and is a member of the Japan Board Diversity Network.

In 2019, she was selected by her fellow CDF directors to receive the C. Hugh Friedman CDF Board Member of the Year award. In 2008, she was named a Millstein Rising Star in Corporate Governance by the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School.

She holds a Master of Business Administration with distinction from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and she graduated from San Diego State University summa cum laude.