Shannon Nash
Appearances
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Well, what I'll say is one of the biggest difference between being on my first, let's say, nonprofit board and for-profit board and what I learned was, especially the size of those nonprofits, they were just a lot smaller. There was more of an expectation for you to work.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
be more hands-on with management and more hands-on with like the operations of the actual nonprofit organization, especially with me having a finance background and on a public company board in particular, that is the opposite. And so what I learned from my first public company board was that your job is to
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
truly be strategic it is not to you know then micromanage like the management's job and you go to the meeting you talk about strategy you talk about how things are are going you have ideas but then management needs to go out and do it not you and so that when you have a long career of being somebody who's you know i started as a lawyer being someone like like like
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
dissecting you know everything and just being truly showing that like you can do the job that's not your role as to i can do the job your job is to be really strategic because i will say that that's a hard thing for a lot of especially type a people to turn on and off it is really hard and i think that's right on because so many people start out as being great operators or something lawyers ceos whatever they were that got them into board service
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Well, I always tell people that if you want to learn about, if you want to like dive into a company and learn everything about the business and the company, you got to do some time on the audit committee. Because everything, the audit committee is oftentimes like the receptacle of everything. There's the things that are required.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
And then when they don't know where to put something, they put it in audit. So you learn a lot about a company. And so to your point, could that be stressful? I mean, yeah, because you are literally have your hands and your eyes and ears on everything that's going on at the company. On the comp committee, look, you are one of the biggest assets.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
And for most companies, the biggest cost is their people and their human capital management. And you are responsible for not only setting exec comp, but really also looking at just what's the comp philosophy of the entire organization and what's the culture of the entire organization. So as you can imagine, a lot of those type of things come through the compensation committee.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
It's the good, the bad, the ugly. Sometimes it's about some really serious employee issues that has to come through the comp committee. Other times it's stressful succession planning, right? The unexpected succession planning. I've had that happen to me. So it, you know, it definitely keeps you on your toes. But I think, you know,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Like Desiree said earlier, when you want to get on a board, you need to be able to really articulate what is your value proposition? What have you had experience doing? And what do you think you can bring value to the table? And those are two committees in particular that every board really needs to have folks who can go very deep in those discussions.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Yeah, I'm most focused and excited about this year. I'm working on my own podcast, so that will hopefully debut later this year. So super excited about just that thought leadership. And then also just continuing to help amplify the voices of younger generation of folks getting on board, in particular, getting more women on boards. That's what I'm pretty excited about this year.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
And I want to echo what everyone has said. First, thank you for having us on this podcast. Secondly, it's always a privilege to be around these two lovely leaders and ladies. So thank you for bringing us back together. We did a panel together not too long ago. And so this is just bringing the gang back together and we're loving it. But I am Shannon Nash.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
I serve on public and private company boards. I'm on the board of SoFi Bank, NetScout Systems, and Lazy Dog Restaurants. I chair both audit and compensation committees. But my background is I'm a former tech CFO and COO. A lot of experience in M&A, IPOs. Like you said, I practiced law. I was at Cooley and K&L Gates. And I also started my career at KPMG.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
So just built a career across biotech, tech, law, media, fintech, and really have been able to turn that into my passion for governance, growth strategy, and leadership. And then outside the boardroom and how we actually got together with these ladies is I produced a film called On Board, which
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
which really tells the story of the first black woman that got on a board, but it explores the dynamics of corporate boardrooms and about like who's really getting seats at the table. So we, you know, we're celebrating a couple of years of that film being out. I'm super proud of that.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
And finally, I'm spending a lot of time just really counseling and helping particularly other women with their board aspirations.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
So her name was Patricia Roberts Harris, and she joined the board of IBM in 1970. A true trailblazer. She was in Jimmy Carter's cabinet. She was the dean of Howard Law School. You know, what wasn't she? And it's super remarkable that she was able to accomplish that in 1970, given her background and experience. And, you know, just how she was the first of everything that she did.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
It's really lonely to be the first. But I think she really showed that, you know, it gives other people permission to really strive because you see it and believe it. Why not? And lots of people came after her. But we wanted to make sure that Patricia Robert Harris got her.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Appropriately credited for being the first one, because prior to us making that film, Scott, when you Googled the first African-American woman on a board, you actually got somebody else's name and we were able to correct that.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Well, what I'll say is that, you know, we've obviously since 1970, but quite frankly, in the last 10 years, I'll say, look, we've made some progress. But in particular, and I will say the last year or so, momentum is slow. It really has. There's an organization called 50-50 Women on Boards, and they do a report every year. And I'll give you a couple of stats.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
Women hold roughly about 30% of all board seats across Russell 3000 companies. And also, if you look at Fortune 500 companies, it's roughly about 30%. That's meaningful because in 2018, women were at roughly about 17%. But what we have seen lately is that increase when you look at a year-over-year basis has really slowed to roughly about 1%.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
And then when you look at women of color, you know, the gap is even wider. Women of color hold roughly about 8% of all corporate board seats. I think the other thing to focus on is when you look at who's in the leadership roles of these boards. So who is the board chair? Who's the chair of the nominating and governance committee? Things of that nature. It's under 10%.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
So the leadership at the top of the board hierarchy still is heavily dominated you know, dominated, if you will, by men. So there's some, you know, there's some room for some improvements there. I think that, you know, what we can say is this is what's going on in the United States.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
But when you look at internationally and you look at the FTSE 350 in the UK, they're at almost 43, 44% women on boards. So, you know, there are some differences. And what I'm seeing, and I think we'll get into it, is that I'm seeing a lot of women also look at international, U.S.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Breaking Barriers: Women Leading on Boards with Desirée Rogers, Marisa Murillo, and Shannon Nash 4-14-25
women at least, look at international boards, because there's a lot more opportunity, quite frankly, that we're seeing in other places outside the U.S. But, you know, look, all in all, I think that we've made some significant changes. It's just progress is the trend is showing that we're slowing down a bit.