BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Meet The Founders On A Mission To Facilitate 75,000 Board Opportunities For Women

Following
This article is more than 2 years old.

As more companies commit to D&I programs, more women join the board of directors. In December, 50/50 Women on Boards, a leading non-profit education and advocacy campaign that drives gender balance and diversity on corporate boards, reported that women hold 26.7% of the Russell 3000 company board seats. However, at the current rate of change, women are not expected to hold 50% of the corporate board seats until 2030. Organizations like The Fourth Floor are a driving force to making this prediction reality.

Breen Sullivan, founder of The Fourth Floor and Forbes Next 1000, and cofounder Kat de Haen are helping women understand how board governance works and how to secure a seat at the table. They're driving systemic change by getting women onto the boards and cap tables of startups so they can initiate and advance their board careers and investment portfolios while fueling funding to women-led startups.

Since launching the organization in 2019, the founders have grown their platform to over 1,400 active members with 5,000 people within the community. They've also developed their sponsor and partner roster, including Diligent, Kirkland & Ellis, Lean In and Crunchbase. Recently, they soft-launched the Pay It Forward Initiative. Their goal is to get 75,000 women onto for-profit boards by the end-of 2025.

"It's women helping women," Sullivan explains. "We're giving women opportunities by getting them onto the boards of women-led startups, but you're talking about a pretty small ecosystem if you're only focused on women-led startups and then candidates coming in and accessing this finite, relatively small pool of opportunities. And yet, how do we drive systemic change? How do we really make a difference when it comes to foreign demographics and the big picture in the United States?"

She continues to share, "What we realized is that we can mirror the value creation circle that we built in The Fourth Floor, and that's very successful for women helping women. We can mirror it, and replicate it on a much larger scale that can expand the flywheel of what we're doing to bring in all companies, whether they're public, private, male founded, which, of course, are the vast majority of companies. And we can work together to hit this goal of seventy-five thousand."

It can sometimes take over three years to secure a corporate board seat. Therefore, the strategy has to be thought of as a long-term process. Many people start as advisory board members or on a non-profit. The Pay It Forward Initiative helps shorten the process.

The Initiative allows all companies, large or small, male or female-led, to tap into the organization's ecosystem to diversify their boards and executive teams. Every partner that joins the program has to offer or post one board opportunity and at least two women executives in its company that meet the membership criteria—a win-win-win for everybody. Also, each partner has to commit to recommending the program to its portfolio companies. Also, Pay It Forward Partners earn a verified seal.

Already, Sullivan and de Haen have secured eight Greater Impact Partners, including Corporate Counsel Business Journal, The Innovation Space and Stella Labs. Through recommendations of the partners that have already signed on, they estimate that 470 Pay It Forward Partner Companies would initiate and advance at least 1,410 board careers for women.

The idea for the Fourth Floor came about through Sullivan and de Haen's frustration within their careers and experiences. They were introduced to one another through a mutual friend. Sullivan explained to de Haen her idea to build a community of founders, board candidates and investors; one place where women can go to network and fill gaps within their practices.

In addition to the Initiative, they also launched the Board Seat Exchange. Startups list their board seat opportunities in the platform and members can apply. Currently, there are 300 startups listing roughly 700 opportunities.

"It was this realization that so many women entrepreneurs, part of why they come out of the gate a little behind the curve is because they don't have a deep bench of advisors from day one," Sullivan comments. "So realizing that women founders were particularly vulnerable to not having the right access to resources and support to build out and leverage these boards effectively, that was the initial insight that led to the creation of this board seat exchange marketplace. We knew this is something the founders needed to tap into, and they would benefit from it."

As Sullivan and de Haen continue to expand the organization and expose board seat opportunities for women, they focus on the following essential steps:

  • Go big. Start with the most impactful idea you have and then break it into small manageable steps. Each step will get you closer to achieving the dream.
  • Focus on what matters. Block out the white noise and work on the tasks that will get you to where you want to go; stop wasting time on things that don't drive your idea forward.
  • Be adaptable. Success isn't a linear line; it zig-zags. There are many ways to reach your goal.

"Seventy-five thousand is a big number," Breen concludes. "It's a stretch number. But, it's one that given the studies that are out there now, which frankly, there hasn't been that much analysis of the demographics surrounding private boards, the numbers are pretty bleak when it comes to diversity on those boards. So if we were able to get 75,000 women somewhere on those boards in that private company demographic, it will statistically material shift in the diversity metrics."

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedInCheck out my website or some of my other work here