Black Women on Boards Launches New Accelerator and Founding Partners

Merline Saintil and Robin Washington. PRNEWSFOTO
Merline Saintil and Robin Washington. PRNEWSFOTO

 Black Women on Boards Launches New Accelerator and Founding Partners

PALO ALTO, Calif., PRNewswire -- Black Women on Boards (BWOB), a new global organization that removes the invisible
obstacles that Black female executives face when pursuing
board membership, announced a new cohort-based board accelerator program for its members with the support of founding partnerships with DCVC, Diligent, Felicis
Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Sapphire Ventures.

The accelerator program aims to place 100 percent of the cohort
in board roles by the end of 2022. Founding partners will mentor
their cohort executives via regular office hours and bespoke
workshops. In addition, participants will be given exclusive
access to CEOs from each venture firm’s portfolio companies.
Founding partners will focus on providing visibility, networks
and sponsorship to propel Black female leaders into public and
private board seats.

“The most recent reports show that Black women account
for just 4 percent of S&P 500 board seats,” said Robin Washington, co-founder of BWOB, and a board member of Google’s parent Alphabet, of Honeywell, and of Salesforce, respectively. We know there’s an opportunity to increase this number on public boards, and to go even further to include opportunities on private boards as well. “I’m thrilled that we have a deep talent pool of Black women executives who are board ready and who have the expertise to truly help companies achieve better business results in an increasingly complex world. I’m grateful for our sponsors and partners, who are committed to ensuring the success of this program,” added Merline Saintil, co-founder of BWOB, and a board member of several public corporate boards including, GitLab, Rocket
Lab, and Fortune 500 company, TD SYNNEX.

“Also, integral to our ethos of “Lift As You Climb”, I’m focused
on supporting mid-career women to accelerate their opportunities. As such, we will be dropping an NFT on February 10, 2022 on the Versus Marketplace on Flow in partnership with Dapper Labs to fuel this program and more broadly engage our community in this new fast growing medium,” said Merline Saintil.

“A diverse boardroom is critical to the long-term success
of organizations and through the great work of BWOB, more
diverse candidates will be connected with opportunities to
guide companies through the turbulent and uncertain challenges
they now face,” said Brian Stafford, CEO of Diligent
Corporation, the global leader in modern governance providing
SaaS solutions across governance, risk, compliance and ESG.

BWOB has experienced rapid growth and placement of
Black female leaders.

Founded in 2020, BWOB has successfully placed executives in board and advisory roles. Co-founders Merline Saintil and Robin L. Washington came together to formalize an approach that prepared candidates for success. They launched with a handful of members that were board ready, and then worked together to create shared visibility to upcoming public board opportunities. The organization grew rapidly and organically as more members began to explore their board eligibility, and refer their colleagues.

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