It's 2019 and we've reached a new milestone on Wall Street.
Last week the S&P reported it is now gender diverse across all 500 company boards. Navient is the S&P 500 company with the highest percentage of female board members with 58.2% being women, according to Equilar and Copart, a Dallas-based used car seller, was the last company in the index without a female member until it announced that it had appointed Diane Morefield to its board of directors.
Pressure from investment houses like BlackRock, the post #MeToo era and research linking board diversity to better financial performance have all given a big reason for companies to recruit more women to their boards.
It's time for more women in energy now that ever.
I'm happy to see we have more women on boards but it can't stop there. We have to have more ethnic representation and we need more diversity in the pipeline.
Last week I read this story by the New York Times about how we've managed to put a man on the moon but that we haven't solved climate change. I responded. The challenge on our environment can be solved with equality. I call this E3. The way we get at the energy transition and the dual challenge is to involve more people. That's how we transform all parts of the industry.
Our industry has been one big silo for years. That's got to stop.
If we look at the entire value chain around energy, it all has its purpose. From oil and gas to renewables, we have a large resource pool but that means putting in the infrastructure and workforce to meet the world's energy needs. The challenge is we've spent years in a bubble. People do not choose energy as a path for jobs. We've relied on talent strategies that don't work. We've put the SAME people in the SAME jobs doing the SAME things. When everything is the same, we become stagnant and innovation is about putting more people at the table tackling challenges.
Like the S&P can reach this milestone of more equality, I believe our industry needs to shift into overdrive and find the best and brightest who can bring new ideas and innovative thinking to these most pressing challenges.
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