Women, people of color see gains on the corporate board; Latinos lag behind

A new study released Thursday found that the number of women and people of color on the corporate boards of the nation’s largest companies increased by 38% in 2022.

Fortune 500 companies had 44.7% women and people of color in board positions in 2022, up 38% from 2020, according to the seventh edition of “Missing Pieces”, a report published by management consultancy Deloitte and the Alliance for Board Diversity.

Overall, people of color on boards increased from 17.5% in 2020 to 22.2% in 2022. Blacks made the biggest gains, from 8.7% to 11.9%, Asians/Pacific Islanders they saw their number grow from 4.6% to 5.4% and Latinos increased from 4.1% to 4.7%.

Growth, but still lagging

«This year’s report findings show gradual steps in the right direction, but at this rate, America’s top corporate boards may not represent the nation’s people until 2060,» said Carey Oven, national managing partner of Deloitte’s Center for Board Effectiveness, in the report. report. “Diversity and inclusion on boards is not just the right thing to do; it is a business imperative that builds broad stakeholder trust that can ultimately lead to better business outcomes.”

White men held the most seats on corporate boards at 55.3%. Women held 30% of board seats in 2022, up from 26.5% in 2020. Black women saw the largest percentage increase at 47%, gaining 86 board seats since 2020. Asian/Black women Pacific Islanders gained 24 seats, an increase of 27% and Latina women added 14 seats, an increase of 23.7%.

Cid Wilson, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association for Corporate Responsibility, an advocacy group that promotes greater Latino inclusion in corporate America, told NBC News that Latino representation on the board hasn’t changed much in nearly 20 years.

“It is a significant concern that we have given the fact that our community has not only grown in population, but that we are now the fifth largest economy in the world,” he said. “Corporate America needs to adapt to an increasingly diverse community, without asking us to assimilate into a white-centric construction of what a corporate board of directors should look like. And once we start to get into an acculturation format, we can start to move the needle for more Latinos and Latinas.”

‘We have to be looking in different places’

Myrna Soto, founder and CEO of Apogee Executive Advisors, an executive advisory and consulting firm, said having a diverse perspective in the boardroom is critical to influencing and helping the executive management team forge strategy and business imperatives. of a company.

When it comes to increasing Latino representation on the board of directors, companies can struggle to drive diversity due to a lack of talent awareness. And coupled with a finite number of board seats, Soto said, it will take time to achieve further increases in diversity.

“It’s kind of inappropriate for people to say, ‘I can’t find the talent,’” said Soto, who helps advise women and women of color on what a journey to get on a board might look like. “The reality is that the search process and the process to get diverse candidates, including Latinos, on the boards, is that we have to look in different places. We cannot look at the same historical and traditional places because the representation is simply not there.”