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Jennifer Dulski: "To Join (Your First) Public Board, Someone Needs to Bet on You"
Description
(0:00) Intro.
(1:21) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.
(2:08) Start of interview.
(2:41) Jennifer's "origin story."
(3:41) Founding a non-profit at the start of her career: Breakthrough Pittsburgh.
(4:15) The start of her tech career with Yahoo!
(7:12) Her roles post Yahoo!: founding and selling The Dealmap to Google.
(9:20) Her transition and tenure as president & COO of Change.org (scaling from 18 million to 200 million users). About her Motivational Pie Chart.
(11:07) About Change.org (a social impact campaigning platform) and non-profit and PBC corporate structures.
(14:18) Her time at Facebook (now Meta), leading the Facebook Groups product.
(16:00) About Rising Team, the company she founded and where she currently serves as CEO.
(22:10) On her board journey, and distinctions among different types of companies: non-profits, startups (Little Passports), public companies (Move, TEGNA & WeightWatchers) and VC/PE backed companies. "The truth is to join a public board, somebody needs to take a bet on you if you've never been on a public board."
(32:19) On serving in a VC/PE backed company as a lead independent director and comp committee Chair (Arcadia). On board observer roles. Setting board norms.
(36:55) On the benefit of boardroom diversity.
(39:17) On dealing with the politicization of the boardroom, including DEI and ESG matters.
(42:06) On the benefits of teaching (at Stanford GSB) for her CEO and board roles .
(39:17) On dealing with the politicization of the boardroom, including DEI and ESG matters.
(44:15) Three things top of mind on boardroom matters: 1) Setting up boards for success (norms, board evaluations, etc), 2) Keeping up with new technologies, and 3) Crisis scenario planning.
(49:00) Books that have greatly influenced her life:
- Gung Ho, by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles (1997)
- The Overstory, by Richard Powers (2018)
(51:14) Her mentors.*Reference to her LinkedIn Post: 5 Mentor Archetypes.
(51:57) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by.
(53:15) About her book: Purposeful: Are you a Manager or a Movement Starter? (2018) The 3 C