NACD in the News

• Embracing Board Diversity: Go Beyond the Numbers

  Despite the media attention on issues of diversity, the pace of progress around diversity in corporate boardrooms remains challenging. Half—49.5 percent—of United States boards in the U.S. Russell 3000 Index currently have two or more female directors, but only 17 percent of the total of boardroom seats on the Index are held by women.

• Behind the Boardroom Door: Don't discount disclosure docs

  This is the latest edition of an ongoing series exclusive to the Business Journal from the National Association of Corporate Directors New England chapter, offering a preview of a panel on proxies and disclosures.

• Top Tips to Improve Your Organization’s Digital Governance in 2019

  The cyber risk landscape is quickly evolving and cyber breaches are becoming increasingly common. Organizations have been slow to catch up with the new threat landscape. The fastest growing threats today are coming from outside the network — digital and social media and third party vendors. Yet organizations are still organized to focus primarily on more traditional IT security risk management They are not updating their processes and policies or investing in tools and technologies to comprehensively address the latest and fastest growing threats. As the cyber risk landscape evolves, cyber risk management must evolve as well to truly ensure security, privacy and data protection. In addition, the public’s awareness of the importance of digital risk management and attention to how companies handle data and privacy is increasing. Digital risk management can affect consumer trust, customer loyalty and even shareholder value.

• Lack of Understanding Is the True Cyber Risk

  CCBJ: You recently joined Marsh’s cyber-risk consulting practice in New York after a long stint at the SEC. Tell us about your career. Christopher Hetner: I've been in the cybersecurity arena for just over 25 years. I recall taking a computer security course as an undergraduate in which the professor stressed that the “bad guys” are going to shift their efforts from robbing banks using guns to executing code across the bank’s computer networks. This inspired me to focus on protecting complex and interconnected networks early in my career.

• Directors to be Tested on Whether They’re Corporate Board-Ready

  New or aspiring directors on public company boards will soon be able to test their readiness for the role by taking an exam.

• Boards Need to Push ESG Out of Silos

  Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are increasingly factored into corporate performance.

• Time to Care About Machines Displacing Workers

  While at board meetings, Elaine Eisenman makes a point of having conversations with fellow directors about how to meet future human capital needs as technology changes and displaces jobs.

• Behind the Boardroom Door: Managing shareholder activism

  The National Association of Corporate Directors New England chapter is convening four experts in the field of shareholder activism at its next gathering on April 9 in Waltham.

• Business Times analysis: Diversity in Pittsburgh's board rooms lags Fortune 500

  Among 32 public company boards analyzed by the Business Times, 13 had no minority board members. Find out which companies had the most and which had the least.

• California’s board gender diversity mandate: will it matter?

  As discussed in this article in Bloomberg Businessweek, a new analysis conducted by Bloomberg explores the potential impact of California’s new board gender diversity mandate, SB 826. And what does it show? The impact on the composition of boards could be substantial—perhaps even a “sea change.”