Facebook and Twitter, as hyped as they were ahead of their public-market debuts, had in common one not-so-impressive number: zero female board members.
While each company addressed the matter by adding women directors after their initial public offerings, another startup is trying to avoid the firestorm altogether. Zendesk, which makes cloud-based customer-support technology for businesses, added three women to its board today.
The newcomers are Caryn Marooney, Facebook’s vice president of technology communications; Elizabeth “Betsey” Nelson, former finance chief of Macromedia; and Michelle Wilson, former Amazon.com chief counsel. Prior to the announcement, San Francisco-based Zendesk’s board consisted of four men, including Benchmark’s Peter Fenton, a venture capitalist who is also on Twitter’s board.
“We chose these three board members because they’ve been on the front line of guiding companies through tremendous growth,” said Matt Hicks, a spokesman at Zendesk. “It was a bonus that all three are also women and will bring more diversity to our board.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Zendesk had picked bankers for its IPO, citing people familiar with the deal. Hicks declined to comment on the company’s plans.
Whether or not an offering is coming soon, Zendesk is showing that it’s listening to complaints that the technology industry is too much of a boys’ club.
Facebook drew criticism from advocacy groups and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System prior to its 2012 IPO about having no female directors. The Menlo Park, California-based company subsequently added Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Susan Desmond-Hellman, chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco, to its board.
Sallie Krawcheck, a former Bank of America executive, said in November at a Bloomberg LP conference that Twitter’s lack of female representation was “a joke.” San Francisco-based Twitter, which went public earlier that month, named former Pearson Chief Executive Officer Marjorie Scardino to its board in December.
Original post is Startup Zendesk Adds 3 Women to Board, Bucking Technology Trend by Tech Deals.
