SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ENTERPRISE : Getting Diversity Into the Boardrooms : Executive search firm helps corporations find women and minorities to serve as directors and executives.
It was a different era in 1985 when a shareholder at an annual meeting asked Unocal Chairman Fred L. Hartley how long it would take the Los Angeles oil giant to appoint a woman to its board of directors.
The irascible top executive explained “how hard it is to select women who have honest-to-goodness business experience,” before adding: “I had one lady in mind and she died.” Hundreds of stockholders shared a good laugh that day.
Nowadays, diversity is a very serious issue for corporations that are examining the residents of their boardrooms and executive offices with an eye toward competing more effectively in a diverse marketplace. (Unocal, by the way, added a female director in 1989, but still lacks minorities.)
As a result, finding women and minorities has become a hot new area of business for executive search firms, both large and small. A fledgling company with the apt name of Diversity Search Partners is taking a unique approach.
The firm’s multiethnic principals are giving their knowledge away in the form of a book of prospective minority and female board candidates--sort of like a dating service for corporations. Their hope is to promote diversity and perhaps generate a little executive search action along the way for their 8-month-old company.
“Corporations are realizing this is a business need, not just a good thing to do,” said Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, president of Diversity Search Partners, which is based in downtown Los Angeles’ historic Union Station.
The idea behind Diversity Search Partners as well as for its corporate board candidate portfolio grew out of Berkhemer-Credaire’s volunteer service with Rebuild L.A. after the 1992 riots. “I met so many remarkable minority executives whom I did not know before,” said Berkhemer-Credaire, who was chairwoman of RLA’s public relations and communications committee. “I saw a tremendous need.” She began seeking partners with the same vision.
At the same time, then-RLA chief Peter Ueberroth was dreaming of a book that chief executives could use to go beyond the usual circles when seeking candidates for director positions.
Ueberroth persuaded Diversity Search Partners to donate time and contacts to find the 73 candidates in the portfolio. He wrote a cover letter and provided a mailing list of top executives of large companies, who began receiving the book in July. Lincy Foundation helped pay for printing costs with a donation made through RLA.
The book lists blacks, Latinos and Asians who are qualified to serve on boards of corporations or nonprofit organizations. Some already do.
“The main criterion was outstanding business careers,” Berkhemer-Credaire said. “We looked for experience that would be a complement or an advantage to a corporate board.”
Included are such well-known names as former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Los Angeles Urban League President John W. Mack, Vons Cos. President Emeritus William S. Davila, and lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., whose clients have included Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson.
But most are less recognized, the type of men and women whom large corporations seldom consider when looking to fill a board position, said Fred J. Clayton, a partner in Diversity Search Partners with a long history in executive search and human resource consulting positions.
“We ended up talking to more people than we anticipated and ended up including more people than we had anticipated ,” Clayton said.
But the book, which the partners have hopefully labeled “Volume One,” is not all-inclusive, Clayton added. No names of Native Americans or disabled people made the list, simply because Diversity Search Partners did not come across any this time, he said. The book also emphasized people from the West.
“We were not doing the definitive study,” Berkhemer-Credaire said. “We did not analyze every potential candidate in the country and select 73.”
The book also will help promote Diversity Search Partners to future clients in need of minority and female directors and executives, said Peter Garrett, publisher of Directorship newsletter, a monthly publication on corporate governance issues.
“I think the effort to be a focal point for qualified people is a proactive move that will serve them well,” Garrett said. “For my money, based on what we hear from corporate secretaries, there is high interest at least in Fortune 500 companies in locating a new--and I would underline new --group of qualified minorities and women to be considered for board service.”
Currently about 4% of board seats are held by minorities, Garrett said. But the same names appear again and again as a relatively small group of candidates gets the corporate “stamp of approval,” he said.
O.J. Simpson, for example, was on four corporate boards before his arrest on suspicion of murder.
“Generally, for corporate boards, it’s that name I.D.,” said Melba T. Sanders, a member of Diversity Search Partners who previously owned an “executive image” consulting firm.
Added partner Geri Sacasa: “The myth that many of our corporate clients have come to believe is that there is a limited number of qualified candidates available (for director and senior executive positions), and we know that’s not true.”
“People are able to open this document and read about people with achievements that equal their own, if not surpass them,” said Sacasa, who folded her own executive search firm specializing in minorities and women into Diversity Search Partners. Beyond the corporate board portfolio, Diversity Search Partners concentrates on finding “balanced” groups of candidates for executive positions that pay $75,000 or more. The company has conducted searches for firms such as Walt Disney Co., Anheuser-Busch Inc., Nestle and Bank of America. Diversity Search also helps clients find minority suppliers.
“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure on corporations to diversify their boards” and executive positions coming from consumers, employees and shareholders, said partner Bill Imada, who has a human relations background and owns a separate marketing firm called Imada Wong Communications, which specializes in the Asian marketplace.
