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Mogul research reveals only 7% of the 5,403 identified board of directors named to Fortune 500 companies are both female and non-white; launches board-ready recruitment filters to drive more progress
NEW YORK — July 28, 2022 — Mogul, Inc. one of the world’s largest resources for diverse talent, today launched a nationwide initiative called “Build Better Boards” to raise awareness of the need for more diverse corporate boards. As part of the initiative, Mogul released an extensive research report that analyzes and ranks gender and ethnic diversity within the corporate board of directors across Fortune 500 publicly traded companies. The report can be found here. In an effort to drive more immediate progress, Mogul also launched two new products aimed at increasing diversity on the Board level in addition to its existing board placement services. The new products include an exclusive private membership for Board-Ready executives and a Board-Ready filter on Mogul’s innovative Talent Acquisition platform which would allow talent teams to source diverse Board-Ready candidates from its 494-million candidate base.
Mogul’s “Board Diversity in 2022” research report identifies several key findings:
Overall
16 companies within the Fortune 500 have zero ethnic minorities on their boards
Three companies of the Fortune 500 have no diversity at all: zero females and zero minorities
There are zero Native Americans serving on Fortune 500 boards
Gender diversity
Only 30.89% female, even though female workforce participation is above 50%. The number drops to a staggering 7% for non-white female Board members.
Ethnic diversity of boards
Only 21.38% of board members are ethnically diverse
12.1% African American (4.6% female; 7.5% male)
5.5% Asian (1.8% female; 3.7% male)
3.4% Hispanic/LatinX (0.8% female; 2.6% male)
Zero Native American board members
Diversity within industries is mixed
Retail and Professional Services have the highest gender diversity (35%)
Telecommunication and Packaging have the lowest gender diversity (23%)
Real Estate and Computer Software have the highest ethnic diversity (32%)
Agriculture and Packaging have the lowest ethnic diversity (8%)
Energy had the lowest gender and ethnic diversity at 0%
Clear room for growth
Out of over 5,400 available board seats, 734 hold multiple board seats. Of these 734 people, 65% are male.
“To date, there are not 100 diverse boards within the Fortune 500, which highlights how much work needs to be done,” said Tiffany Pham, founder, CEO, and chairman of the Board at Mogul. Mogul’s executive recruitment division publishes diversity-focused “Top 100” lists on a quarterly basis. “That led us to our current research and some surprising insights about leading companies, many of which need to find more diverse executives including women, persons of color, veterans, and people with a disability to serve on their boards.”
According to The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the average tenure of a board member is 9.7 years. “At our current rate, it will take at least five decades to reach ethnic parity on boards,” said Pham, “Someone graduating university today will be 73 years old when we reach parity.”
Mogul’s entry into talent acquisition software in 2020 has given recruiters an alternative way to search for diverse talent. Now, the launch of its newest board-ready search filters strengthens the platform’s already extensive search categories, including its disability, veteran, gender and ethnicity filters.
Mogul’s Diversity Innovations
According to Pham, most mainstream talent acquisition systems use algorithms that are unconsciously biased and tend to favor non-diverse and usually white male candidates in search results — a status quo that is evident in the eye-opening statistics within Mogul’s research paper. Increasingly, top companies are using Mogul’s diversity-focused talent software and executive recruitment services to supplement their mainstream systems to find a deeper level of diverse talent than ever before.
For Candidates Seeking Board Roles
Mogul’s new membership for C-suite and VP-level board candidates includes introductions, networking, and private meetups for diverse, board-ready executives.
For Companies Seeking Board Members
Mogul’s new “Board-Ready” filters within its innovative talent software allow recruiters to more easily find diverse C-suite candidates who already serve on corporate boards or are ready to do so. Additionally, Mogul offers patent-pending filters that allow recruiters to sort candidates by other diverse demographics, including gender, ethnicity, disability status, and veteran status. No other software offers this combination of abilities.
The “Build Better Boards” campaign is a way to reach candidates and boards simultaneously, as Mogul offers diversity-focused executive and board recruitment services for the world’s top companies, both public and private.
To date, Mogul has partnered with many of the world’s top workplaces to increase their diverse talent pipelines by an average of 74 percent per year, impacting nearly 500 million people across 195 countries and more than 30,000 cities. To learn more about Mogul’s “Build Better Boards” initiative, visit www.onmogul.com/boards.
About Mogul
An innovator in the $200 billion global recruitment market, Mogul is one of the world's largest resources for diverse talent. Mogul partners with the Fortune 1000 and the world's fastest-growing companies to attract and advance top diverse talent — from entry-level to executive and board-level worldwide — offering market-leading talent acquisition software, inclusive online communities, and executive recruitment services. Long-time clients include Fortune 1000 organizations such as Anheuser-Busch, Bain & Co., The Hershey Company, The Honest Company, Nike, Shopify, Stanley Black & Decker, and United Healthcare.
The company has been named one of the "100 Most Exciting Startups" by Business Insider, "Best Website for Finding Top Talent" by Inc. Magazine, "Top Website for Marketing Your Company" by Forbes, and "Top Online Learning Platform" by Entrepreneur.
Contact for press inquiries
Margo Pelak, Global Head of Media Relations
[email protected]
+1 888-666-6485