OC Boardrooms See Some Change
Orange County boardrooms are a little more diverse than they were 10 years ago, according to a study by executive search company Berkhemer Clayton Inc.
The Los Angeles-based company looked at the composition of the board of directors at 11 OC-based companies with at least $1 billion in revenue and found that 11.3% of the seats are held by women.
Ten years ago, 7.6% were women.
Berkhemer found that two directors today are people of color,there were none in 1992.
“All change must come from the top,” said company President Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, “so any improvement in diversity among corporate boards shows that many corporations are at least showing positive effort.”
Of the companies surveyed, Newport Beach-based Conexant Systems Inc., CKE Restaurants Inc. (recently moved from Anaheim to Santa Barbara) and Irvine-based Standard Pacific Corp. had no women or minorities on their boards.
The other OC companies surveyed were Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro Inc., Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc, Santa Ana-based The First American Corp., Lake Forest-based Western Digital Corp., Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter Inc., Aliso Viejo-based Fluor Corp., Irvine-based Allergan Inc., and Lake Forest-based Apria Healthcare Group Inc.
Graduate students at UCLA’s Anderson School and Berkhemer Clayton staff studied annual reports, proxy statements and databases to come up with the results.
,Samantha Lee
