The UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust-led Midwest Investors Diversity Initiative reported on its progress to increase board diversity – having engaged 16 portfolio companies with less than 30% board diversity since its 2016 launch that have adopted diverse candidate search policies - six of which have appointed women and minorities to their boards. The Initiative's focus is on encouraging boards' implementation of practices that promote board diversity via working with Nom/Gov Committees to adopt diverse search policies, interview female and minority candidates for every open seat ("Rooney Rule"), and require search firms to include such candidates in the initial search pool.
The Initiative, in conjunction with University of San Diego School of Business Prof. Annalisa Barrett, concurrently released this "Diverse Search Company Toolkit" aimed at assisting boards with implementing a diverse search policy from adoption to the final steps of the search process inclusive of a best practice checklist, sample diverse search policies, and diverse candidate search resources, and this compendium of "Examples of Candidate Diverse Search Language," which provides instructive excerpts of diversity search language adopted by 33 companies across industries and incorporated into their Nom/Gov Committee Charters, Corporate Governance Guidelines/Principles or other disclosure.
Additional members of the investor coalition include the Illinois State Treasurer's Office, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, SEIU Master Trust, Sundance Family Foundation, Segal Marco Advisors, State of Wisconsin Board of Investment, Trinity Health, and Wespath Benefits and Investments.
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See also our prior report: "Amazon Adopts 'Rooney Rule' for Director Recruitments," Wachtell Lipton's "Gender Diversity and Board Quotas," our earlier report on California's board gender quota bill, and numerous additional resources – including diversity-focused director search firms and initiatives - on our Board Diversity page. We first reported on this development and these resources in this week's Society Alert!
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