TheCorporateCounsel.net

I’m delighted to return, with Vontier’s Courtney Kamlet, for the 6th season of our “Women Governance Trailblazers” podcast. In our latest 20-minute episode, we interviewed Karen Boykin-Towns, who is an independent director at iFit, Vice Chair of the NAACP National Board of Directors, President/CEO of Encore Strategies, and a Senior Advisor of FGS Global. Karen is also a former Pfizer executive (her leadership roles include its first-ever Chief Diversity Officer in 2008). We discussed:

1. Karen’s career path, current endeavors and what she’s been most proud of over the course of her career.

2. Karen’s thoughts on the current state of corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs and commitments.

3. How companies can balance the call to numerically measure progress in DEI initiatives with the arguments that inclusion can’t be measured and that quotas create legal risk.

4. Karen’s experience on the iFit board, including the decision to withdraw the company’s IPO.

5. Advice to boards and management for adapting to rapidly shifting information, and for monitoring their corporate reputation and emerging issues before they become a crisis.

6. What Karen thinks women in the corporate governance field can add to the current conversation on the societal role of companies.

To listen to any of our prior episodes of Women Governance Trailblazers, visit the podcast page on TheCorporateCounsel.net or use your favorite podcast app. If there are “women governance trailblazers” whose career paths and perspectives you’d like to hear more about, Courtney and I always appreciate recommendations! Shoot me an email at liz@thecorporatecounsel.net.

– Liz Dunshee