almost always unpaid work with a donor or fundraising commitment, independent corporate board jobs are lucrative and draw from an extremely closed circle of contenders, usually white men. “It’s truly frustrating to see the same plantation mentality,” Roberts said. “Women other than women of color are getting on boards at a higher rate and chipping away at the glass ceiling, at least you can see through that ceiling. For Black women, it’s a concrete ceiling. We need a sledgehammer because we can’t even see through the ceiling.”

The civic unrest after the slow, torturous murder of George Floyd for all the world to witness and a succession of killings of Blacks by police led to the racial reckoning of 2020, prompting corporate America and big financial institutions to make several pledges, including changing boardroom compositions to reflect the communities they serve. Companies such as Equilar started tracking boardroom diversity data. In September 2020, three Silicon Valley executives, with a mission to improve Black representation in boardrooms, launched The Board Challenge. Participating companies pledge to appoint a Black director within the year. If the company already has a Black director, they make a promise to introduce their network to The Board Challenge and leverage influence to improve representation in other corporate boards. More than 75 companies have taken the pledge. Boardroom diversity is now occupying center stage in legislative, regulatory, academic, public and media discourse.

But, have these conversations transformed to tangible actions? Are Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts making boards more nonwhite? Does having representation at the top move the needle for employees, businesses, homeowners and communities of color? How much influence can an individual or a small group assert on behalf of a community when they are compensated as part of their representation?

“Diversity in the corporate sector is dying in the middle of the organization,” Sulaiman Rahman, CEO of DiverseForce.

To be in parity with current population size, there should be at least 60 Black CEOs heading corporations, said Sulaiman Rahman, CEO of DiverseForce,  a strategic human capital solutions firm specializing in cultivating diverse leadership pipelines and inclusive ecosystems. He said Black people are grossly underrepresented in C-suites because there is no intentional mentoring and development of a pipeline.“Diversity in the corporate sector is dying in the middle of the organization,” he said.

“That’s why when you look at higher levels you see less and less of Black and Brown people.”

The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that just 17.7 percent of boardroom seats in the 30 Philadelphia-area Fortune 1000 companies are filled by people of color. White men hold 61 percent of those positions, and white women 21.3 percent. Only 8.2  percent of those jobs are held by Black men, while Black women occupy 1.3 percent.

Author Bethany B. Wilkinson, in her book “The Diversity Gap,” said “in an organization where white male leadership has been the historical norm, diversity initiatives often cater best to the needs of the white people (who share the racial identity of the historical leadership) and men of color (who share the gender identity of historical leadership).”

“This leaves gaping holes in the experiences and opportunities afforded to women of color,” she wrote.

Roberts, who has more than three decades of experience in corporate C-suites and is the chairperson at  Merakey Total Health and vice chair of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, said there’s a subconscious bias against accomplished Black women in particular. Corporations often tokenize people of color by limiting their numbers. By doing so, they also limit their powers and ability to implement change.

“They can’t see past the color of our skin,” she said. “There’s a fear that if you put a Black woman on the board who is comfortable in their skin and knowledge, they will speak up and challenge–which is frequently viewed as being difficult.”

Only a few individuals such as Charisse R. Lillie have successfully broken the concrete ceiling that Roberts refers to. Lillie, CEO of CRL Consulting LLC, a former fellow and vice president of community investment for Comcast Corporation and former president of the Comcast Foundation, sits on multiple corporate boards such as PECO, Independence Health Group Inc.  and The Penn Mutual Life Company. She also serves on the Regional Advisory Board of PNC Bank, PA/SNJ/DE and the corporate Advisory Board of  KnectIQ, Inc. To get on a corporate board one needs to know the CEO or an executive at the senior position, she said. Historically women, especially women of color, have been excluded from these networks and that makes it an uphill battle. For each board position she has occupied, she was granted access to the boardroom by someone in her network.

The Tale of Monochromatic Boards

“Unfortunately it’s never been a competitive election and shareholders are asked to vote on an entire slate,” he said.

Sometimes, shareholders can withhold votes on certain members of the slate, and the board might honor the protest vote. But that rarely happens. In recent years, there has been a practice called proxy access which allows long-term shareowners to place a limited number of alternative board candidates on the proxy ballot.

“Either way it’s a very cumbersome process,” Blasi said. “Typically management will oppose and shareowners have to hire lawyers and work with the media to build public awareness and opinion.”

Because of how the system works, corporate boardrooms have always failed to represent people of color or those from diverse backgrounds. Candidates have historically been drawn from a very narrow pool of mostly white men with generational wealth, who belong to the same social network. Occasionally there is representation from nonwhite communities. But those candidates tend to come from wealthier backgrounds with access to mostly white institutions.

In the past, most of the people who become directors are former attorneys or executives from large public accounting firms and C-level executives, said Toya Lawson, partner at Bridge Partners, an executive search firm with a mission to diversify leadership teams.

“Those fields have been dominated by white men for a very long time,” she said.

“If you start with a largely white male board, then they are not reaching beyond their arm’s  length to find their successor,” she said.

The other challenge: many of the boards do not have term limits, and members sometimes serve until they are 75 years old.  It takes forever for a position to open up.

The Power of the Boardroom

If boards prioritize issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion, C-suite executives have no choice but to listen. A diverse board tends to be more racially sensitive because of the lived experiences of its members.

Some make a business case for an inclusive board. Employees are inspired to patronize and work for corporations led by leaders, who look like them. A diverse board tends to make better decisions and the companies tend to be more profitable, according to a study by McKinsey & Co. It creates a space for people from different walks of life to bring in a wide variety of perspectives and represent their communities within the organization.

“The business and finance world is so central to social, economic and political power that underrepresented groups need to be in the boardroom as part of a general forward advance in society,” Michael K. Pearson, principal of Michael K. Pearson Consulting.

But, Wilkinson, the author, terms the business case for diversity as a “failed motivation” undermining a racially, ethnically and culturally diverse organization.

“The business case for diversity is problematic because it’s an assault on human dignity,” she said. When diversity strategy is designed for competitive advantage, people are reduced to a commodity.

Pearson, who specializes in business strategy and operations consulting for for-profit and nonprofit C-suite decision makers, said as the country’s demographic pattern changes, corporations will  have to answer to investors, potential employees and customers, who increasingly value diversity. When applying for jobs, millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (born from 1997 onward) are screening companies on their diversity record, their stance on systemic racism and promotion tracks. Unlike their predecessors, both these generations are more socially aware and use social media and the internet to track companies and their culture and values. Sixty-seven percent of Gen Z respondents said in a survey that their buying powers will permanently be affected by how businesses deliver on their pledges to Black Lives Matter.

People these days are more savvy about where and how they invest money, Pearson said.

“Ultimately,  it (having a more diverse board) is just the right thing to do, but it definitely helps a company’s financial  performance as well,” he said.

A Call to Action

The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and other Black Americans renewed focus on systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement, prompting private, public and regulatory agencies to lobby for change in the corporate world.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved a proposal that requires Nasdaq listed companies, with a few exceptions, to disclose their boardroom composition and have at least one woman and either one person from an underrepresented or LGBTQ+ community by 2023. If a company doesn’t meet the standards, it is required to disclose the reasons in advance of the company’s next shareholder meeting on their proxy statement or on the company’s website. By 2026, companies listed on Nasdaq Capital Market must have two diverse directors. So far there is no penalty in failure to comply, but the measure is already facing a legal challenge. Goldman Sachs announced last year it will only underwrite IPOs in the U.S. and Europe of private companies that have at least two diverse board members.

On the legislative side, California enacted laws that put an end to all white male boardrooms by requiring boards of publicly traded companies based in the state to have at least one diverse director by 2021. Although the California law has been challenged in courts citing unfair discrimination toward white men, following its lead, several other states such as New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania have either passed or introduced laws to address board diversity. In a CNBC interview last fall, Kenneth C. Frazier,  executive  chairman of Merck’s board of directors and an advocate for board diversity, said he is optimistic about changes because every boardroom is confronting the issue of equity and inclusion. Merck is expanding its pool of qualified candidates for board positions and ensuring that there are “no systemic or implicit barriers.” In a boardroom of 13, the company now has three Black directors.

A 2021 study by executive recruiting and leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart found that ethnic and racial minorities made up 47 percent of all new directors on boards of S&P 500 companies. Black directors secured 33 percent of the new board seats.

But, despite the uptick, corporate paid  boardroom positions nationally and locally continue to be dominated largely by white men. These positions are lucrative, unlike nonprofit board jobs, which are seen as a charitable contribution and are generally not compensated. The average annual compensation, including meeting fees, the retainer and stock options for independent directors of small and midcap companies is $175,834, according to consulting firm FW Cook. At JPMorgan Chase, directors earned $250,000 in stock awards in 2020, and the highest paid director earned $140,000 in cash.

Philadelphia-area companies have yet to show any signs of a real sense of urgency for increasing diversity in the boardroom, recruiters and industry experts said.