Posted on September 11, 2020

More Than a Dozen Companies Pledge to Add a Black Director to Their Boards

Catharine Smith, American Greatness, September 10, 2020

More than a dozen companies, including Zillow and M.M.LaFleur, have pledged to add at least one black director to their boards within the next year, according to ABC News.

Zillow, RealSelf, Nextdoor and others are among the 17 companies that have signed the initial pledge launched Wednesday and dubbed the “Board Challenge.”

The 14 other companies that have promised to add a black director in the next 12 months are Accolade, Altimeter Growth, Amperity, Bolster, Gusto, Heritage-Crystal Clean., Heritage Environmental Services, HopSkipDrive, Kin, PagerDuty, RealSelf, Ripple, Senreve, Vinyl Me and Please.

Another 27 companies that already have at least one black director on their board also pledged to encourage corporations to accelerate efforts to get full representation on boards. They include the New York Stock Exchange, Lyft, SurveyMonkey, Nasdaq, Nordstrom, United Airlines, Verizon and Weight Watchers.

The founders of “The Board Challenge,” Altimeter Capital, Valence, and Boardlist are encouraging other companies to join the commitment as well.

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According to Black Enterprise, nearly 40% of the companies listed on the S&P 500 stock index did not have any black directors on their board last year.

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