Agenda: Latinos Hold ‘Staggeringly Low’ Number of Board Seats
The figures are “staggeringly low,” says Roel Campos, who chairs the Latino Corporate Directors Association (LCDA). A former commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission and a director on the board of Regional Management, Campos is calling on California boards to interview Latino candidates whenever they are seeking new board members. “They’ll discover huge talent. Why aren’t Latinos in the boardroom and senior corporate suites of companies in California when a major part of the economy is represented by them? It would make sense,” he says. Among the California-headquartered public companies that didn’t have a Latino on their board as of July 1 were Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Intel and NVIDIA. Campos states that the five companies benefit from the $2.1 trillion in U.S. Latino purchasing power. “They should be the first to put Latinos on their boards and senior management teams.” Indeed, the LCDA found that one third of listed boards based in California are made up of all white directors.