Yahoo Finance IMAX CEO on new board members: We made 'a concerted effort' to find diverse candidates
IMAX (IMAX) has appointed two new members to its board of directors — veteran producer Gail Berman and Reddit COO Jen Wong — raising the number of board seats held by women to three.
"I think we've done a really good job of diversifying our company and our management," IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "I think we've done a less good job at diversifying our board. So we actually went out, and we made a concerted effort to say we want more diverse candidates. But instead of finding one, we found two."
Gail Berman, who was formerly president of Paramount and now serves as the CEO of Jackal Group, was named one of Forbes's Most Powerful Women in 2005. Her appointment to IMAX's board comes ahead of the 95th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, where she has been nominated in the Best Picture category for her role as a producer for "Elvis."
"I think she could bring a lot of expertise to our Hollywood slate and the constituency we operate with," said Gelfond, who has held his full-time CEO role at IMAX for 14 years.
Jen Wong, a veteran in the tech space, has been attributed with leading Reddit's evolution as COO of the social media platform since 2018. Wong also previously served as COO of Time Inc. and led its digital businesses.
"Jen is very senior at a technology company with a great background," Gelfond said of Wong's experience in social media and at Reddit, adding: "I think we thought we could use that expertise."
"It wasn't only that we found candidates of diversity," Gelfond continued. "We found two really good ones. And we thought they could help our company."
Berman and Wong take a seat next to Dana Settle, who has held her position on the board since 2015. Settle co-founded venture capital firm Greycroft and is one of the first female founders in the VC space. She has been adamant in the past about closing the funding gap for female-led startups.
Representation at the 'table of power'
The number of female board members hit a record high in 2022, with 28% of board seats held by women across the Russell 3000. However, the push for gender diversity in C-suites has begun to slow down, Fortune reported, with many boards deprioritizing diversity initiatives.
Some states, such as California, have fought for diversity mandates. In 2018, California passed SB 826, a law requiring publicly-held companies in California to have at least one female director on their boards. However, a California court struck down the law in 2022.
"When we started, about 30% of the companies had zero women on their boards," First Partner of California Jennifer Siebel Newsom told Yahoo Finance Live about the initiative. "And now about a third of California public company board seats are held by women."
Siebel Newsom stated these strategies are about "dismantling the 'old boys club' network of just bringing onto the board somebody that is in your inner circle that you play golf with on the weekend and really growing the network and the potential of a company through who sits in those seats around that table of power."
According to Morningstar analysis, companies in the U.K., U.S., and Canada with over 50% female representation on their board tend to have stronger long-term stock performance and lower fiscal risk. At the same time, the analysts pointed out, gender pay gaps continue to widen.
Another study by Altrata found that female executive leadership drives diversity throughout the company, setting a precedent for women workers to more freely ascend the corporate ladder.
"I've always believed that when you have a seat at that table, you need to make room at the table for more people, make the table bigger," Hain Celestial (HAIN) CEO Wendy Davidson told Yahoo Finance on International Women's Day last Wednesday.
Davidson outlined how companies can add diverse representation to boards through mandated applicant searches, appointing candidates with intention, and even choosing to limit the number of seats occupied by company executives.
"44% of our board are female, almost 40% of our leadership in the company are female," Davidson said. "But I will say that I think there's a misnomer that there isn't available talent."
When asked whether gender diversity on boards was an issue for the entertainment industry, IMAX CEO Gelfond said: "I'm not familiar enough with what other people do, but it was an issue with us, and we fixed it."
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