Jennifer Reynolds is the CEO of the Women Corporate Directors Foundation (WCD). WCD is the world’s largest network of women corporate board directors, with more than 2,500 members serving on more than 8,500 public and private boards around the globe.
Ms. Reynolds’ 25-year career in the financial services industry has included senior roles in investment banking, venture capital and global risk management. Prior to joining WCD, she served as the President & CEO of Toronto Finance International (TFI), a public-private partnership which promotes and develops Canada’s financial services sector and serves as the international representative for the Toronto financial center. Prior to joining TFI, Ms. Reynolds was the President & CEO of Women in Capital Markets (WCM), Canada’s largest industry association and advocacy group for women in the financial sector.
Ms. Reynolds is currently a corporate director of BF&M Insurance Group Ltd, Agrinam Acquisition Corporation and the Canada Development Investment Corporation. She also previously served as a director on the board of Citibank Canada. Ms. Reynolds is the Co-Chair of the UN-convened Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) network and also serves on the Advisory Council for the Institute of Sustainable Finance.
She received her MBA in Finance and BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University. She was also named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women.
Corporate boards continue to face mounting pressure from stakeholders to bring diverse perspectives to the table. Despite substantial progress in recent years, U.S. boardrooms continue to be male-dominated. Several organizations have made it a mission to advance gender diversity in the boardroom, including the Women Corporate Directors Foundation (WCD)—the world’s largest membership organization and community of women corporate board directors.
C-Suite sat down with Jennifer Reynolds, CEO of WCD since February 2022. Ms. Reynolds shared the path that led to her new role as CEO, her vision for establishing WCD as the standard for best practices in board diversity, challenges related to board diversity and much more.
Jennifer Reynolds: My background is 25 years in financial services, primarily in capital markets. I started off my career in investment banking, which was clearly a very male-dominated world and continues to be, quite frankly. I’d been in the industry for about 15 years or so and progressed up through the ranks, but, obviously, faced the typical challenges you do when you’re in a male-dominated environment. The issue for me was that I hadn’t seen any progress in that 15 years. We weren’t moving the dial, and nothing was changing in terms of women in leadership, not just in capital markets, but in the broader economy.
I had an opportunity at that point in my career to lead an organization called Women in Capital Markets, which is Canada’s largest network of women and financial services. I took that leap to move to the nonprofit world and lead that organization because I thought it was important that I spend a portion of my career dedicated to this. I wanted to see us make progress on this, and it was frustrating to me that here we were at that point, well into 2014, and we still weren’t seeing what we should see in terms of moving the dial on women in leadership.
It turned out to be a great decision. I spent five years leading that organization. I think it was a fortuitous time for me to make that move because, in Canada at that point, and more broadly around the world, we were suddenly seeing men get involved and companies actually putting pressure on management teams to make a change and make progress on this. Over that five-year period, we were able to really get senior leadership from men.
It became not just a conversation amongst women, but a broader conversation with men in leadership and the economy, and I think it was a tipping point to see progress both in Canada and internationally. That’s what moved me into this space. I have always been passionate about diversity and been involved in various diversity initiatives throughout my career, but that was really the deep dive and how I ended up in a leadership role.
When this role came along, someone called me and said, “You really should take a look at this.” It was a natural fit for me. It spoke to my passion about women in leadership on a global platform and was really a compelling opportunity. I think that the international aspect of it is a really powerful thing.
I think we want to put the spotlight on boards that aren’t doing [diversity disclosure] well and see how we can help them.
Reynolds: We’re a network of 2,500 female corporate directors around the world. About 60% of those are in the U.S. and the rest are spread across six continents. I’d like to see us leverage that international aspect of the network in more significant ways by connecting the network and being an advocacy movement in different countries around the world, and really being known as the go-to. If you’re a female corporate director, if you’re a chair of a board, if you’re a CEO, this is who you need to talk to to help you diversify your board.
If you want best practices around diversity on your board, WCD is who you should be going to on an international level. I really think that there are opportunities to raise the profile and see growth in some of these international markets as well. I’m excited about that. I think in terms of our general advocacy, I also want to amp that up and raise the voice of WCD to increase pressure on businesses to make changes and progress on diversity.
There is a huge opportunity right now. I think many would argue that we’re seeing a reversal of women’s rights in some regards, and I think that we need to be there advocating for women and making sure that we don’t slide back from where we are today in terms of women’s rights and women’s role in the economy. I do worry that we’ve lost momentum, and it’s time to make sure that we put our foot on the gas and drive initiatives that are going to continue to allow us to move forward with our mission of diversifying economic leadership around the world.
Reynolds: I think that setback in California was, unfortunately, an important one and will have an impact as you pointed out. I think that having that legislation in place encourages the continuation of good work.
There are a lot of other things I worry about. Putting progress on the back burner—that’s of concern. I think if you look around the world on the approach of women on boards, obviously, you’ve got some countries where there are quotas, but you’ve got many, including Canada where I’m from, where diversity disclosure was introduced.
I think in countries like the UK, Australia and Canada, where they’ve asked for diversity disclosure, it has had an impact. Those types of measures are very important to drive progress. You still need to have people like me and leaders in the economy pushing people to do it—large asset managers, private equity folks—they need to help push this along, as well. They’ve got tremendous power to put women on their portfolio company boards and to put them in senior management roles within their own companies.
In the Nordic countries, they’re actually saying to asset managers, you have to have 20% women on your board and in your management team.
I think those types of things can really move the dial. Yes, there was a setback in terms of what we saw in California, and I worry that there is a tone that’s being set, generally, that we don’t have to care about this anymore. That’s really important, and I think we want to make sure that we are continuing to push. It’s a setback, but I don’t think it means we should walk away from diversity disclosure. It’s still very, very important, and we have to make sure we’re pushing for that at minimum from companies.
Reynolds: We want to be very public about putting pressure on things like diversity disclosure. Of course, we want to make sure we’re pushing on that front. I think we want to put the spotlight on boards that aren’t doing that well and see how we can help them and really advocate that they should change and add diversity to their boards. We also want to be very focused on making sure it’s not just a check-the-box exercise.
Often people say, “I’ve got three women on my board; I’m all done.” There’s that 30% number that suddenly people think that they’re done, and that’s not what we’re advocating for. To be very, very clear, we’re advocating for parity. It’s not 30% or three and done, and I think there is that perspective out there and that worries me because I hear that type of commentary often from chairs of boards and chairs of nominating committees.
How do you make sure that doesn’t happen? One thing we will also very much be thinking about is: How do we get more women in the chair role? As you know, your data shows you it’s around 5%, and it hasn’t really moved. If you think about lead director or chairs of boards, we look at CEO numbers, that 5% has been static for a long, long time. Something we’re focused on from an advocacy perspective is not just checking a box, but actually getting to play leadership roles so that we can change the tone and change what’s happening in the boardroom.
That other piece of the check-the-box exercise is making sure that if you have diversity on your board—whether that’s in the form of people of color or ethnicity or women—are you really creating an inclusive conversation where you’re changing things and you’re getting different perspectives, or are you just adding them and expecting them to conform to how things have been done in the past? It is moving from getting that diversity on your board to actually having an inclusive dialogue both on your board and in your management team.
Directors need to be thinking about how we make sure that we deliver on some of those important goals that we set in the ESG space and show to our employees, to our investors and to our broader stakeholders that we’re taking this seriously.
Reynolds: There’s study after study that shows better diversity gets you better financial results. There’s a business case for that. The data shows that if you have that diversity, you’re going to do better. I think the other thing we see is, if you’ve got better diversity on that board, it trickles down to the management team in more significant ways. I think that’s really important.
Reynolds: I think risks have gone up exponentially over the last few years, if you think about the geopolitical situation globally. It’s extremely worrisome if you think about inflation; everyone’s struggling. If you think about supply chain, de-globalization, all of these things are increasing risk significantly, and then you layer them on to all the other things we were already thinking about like cybersecurity risk, which is elevated, as well. All of these things make it very complex for board members today in terms of understanding risk generally and how risk can cascade.
To speak specifically about risks around diversity and inclusion, and ESG more broadly, let’s say there have been a lot of bold statements made by companies, and that’s great. That’s fantastic on climate goals around diversity initiatives, but now it’s delivery time. That’s also a risk—that you lose your stakeholders who you engaged by being proactive and progressive around some of the issues that they want to see progress on. But now, we have to deliver. Directors need to think about how we make sure that we deliver on some of those important goals that we set in the ESG space and show to our employees, to our investors and to our broader stakeholders that we’re taking this seriously. You have to maintain that credibility on that front, as well as deliver on the bottom line.