Women on Board

Amy Keller | 6/1/2007

Mentoring is an important part of the group's mission. Evelyn Follit, a former RadioShack executive and member of WEL, sits on the boards of Catalina Marketing and Winn-Dixie. She says her path to the boardroom began in 1999, when the CEO and chairman of RadioShack instructed her and other company executives to join the board of one publicly traded company to broaden their perspective on issues. Her boss felt that they could bring back valuable lessons by looking at how other companies dealt with governance, technology or capital acquisitions.

"If you ask all of us, all of us had a wonderful mentor and several mentors throughout their careers," she says.

Kushner worries that even the modest strides women have made in Florida's boardrooms could diminish. She notes that while the number of female board members in the state increased slightly last year, the number of C-level positions held by women dropped from 7.6% in 2004 to 5.4% in 2006. That means that the pipeline for qualified women for future board positions narrowed.

Follit sees a few bright spots. She points to government reforms like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which involves strict auditing standards designed to improve corporate governance, as opening up doors for women. "Sarbanes has required all of us to remain financially literate, and from that perspective, it broadens the pool to include many women and minorities," Follit says. "Some of the best financial process and insight come from people who are CFOs and are on audit teams, and there is much more of a female representation." Overall, she remains optimistic: "If you peel back this onion and look at the basic business
environment in which we're all doing business, there's lots of reasons for women to get involved."