Women on Board

Amy Keller | 6/1/2007

Filling a Void: Cindy Kushner heads Women Executive Leadership, which serves as a matchmaker between women executives and companies looking to fill board seats. [Photo: Eileen Escarda]

Nine years ago, Miami businesswoman Ann Spector Lieff was at a crossroads. Camelot Music had just bought Specs Music, the Miami-based retail music chain that her father founded in 1948, and Lieff's 18-year reign as CEO was coming to an end. At 46, Lieff believed she was too young to retire. She thought she would like to serve on the boards of public companies, but offers were few and far between. "The phone wasn't quite ringing off the hook like it had been while I was a CEO. As a former CEO, I didn't seem to be as appealing," Lieff recalls.

When the recruiting firm she called turned her away, Lieff considered becoming a retail consultant. But later that year, through aggressive networking, she landed her first board job with the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund, a management investment company pioneered by Miami closed-end fund guru Thomas Herzfeld. Today, at 55, Lieff also serves on the boards of directors of Hastings Entertainment, Birks & Mayors and Claire's Stores. She also runs a consulting firm specializing in CEO mentoring and leadership development.

The key to her success, she says, is networking. "It's disappointing we don't see more women on corporate boards, but a lot of that has to do with not having as strong of a network as men. Women need to do a better job of speaking out and asking for positions."

Lieff doesn't have a lot of female company in the boardroom. In 2006, women occupied just 106, or 8.7%, of the 1,221 board seats of Florida's top 150 public companies, according to Women Executive Leadership, a Fort Lauderdale-based non-profit that advocates women serving on corporate boards.

Read the complete list here. Companies are ranked by total revenue for 2006.

A big part of the problem for women in Florida is that there aren't many board seats in the state to begin with, says WEL's treasurer, Evelyn D'An, who's also president and founder of D'An Financial Services. "Remember that Florida is not where you will find the bulk of the Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. You'll find them in Chicago, in the bigger cities. Because they have a greater number of board seats, they'll have a larger number (of women) on their board."

WEL President Cindy Kushner says the chief complaint she hears from boards that want to pursue gender diversity is that they can't find "board-ready" women. Interested female executives, meanwhile, don't know where to start or how to assess their
opportunities.

WEL serves as a matchmaker of sorts, providing specialized training to high-level women on topics ranging from corporate governance to risk management and then connecting those high-level executives with search firms. D'An says her contacts through the group and her skill set in the accounting field landed her a spot on the board of Alico, a land management company operating in central and southwest Florida.