EW 031 – How To Empower More Women To Serve On Corporate Boards – with Deborah Rosati, CEO of Women Get On Board

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.829)
Deborah, welcome to the show.

Deborah Rosati (00:03.49)
Thank you, Gordon.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.007)
It's just wonderful to have you here. I've had a chance to be lucky enough to see a couple things. One, I've seen you in action at a conference, know, wowing an audience in the hundreds. I've actually witnessed that and seen it happen. I'm aware of your, some of your pedigree in terms of what you've done corporately and all the different achievements you've had, but also that you're, you know, got Women Get On Board started. And, you know, I'm getting ahead of myself here for the audience that doesn't know you, but I just, it's just great to have you here.

And if you could maybe just start and if you did meet somebody for the first time at a soiree or something like that, what would you say about yourself?

Deborah Rosati (00:41.454)
I like to kick it off with a wow factor. I like to say I wanted to be a businessman just like my father. So here I am 40 years later.

Gordon Sheppard (00:52.755)
And it's, isn't that interesting in businessman, businesswoman in terms of what that is, just for a second then, why did you want to be like your dad?

Deborah Rosati (01:01.486)
Well, I love business. saw my dad go out every day. He touched community. He was a Dutch immigrant. He came to Canada at 14 and spoke only Dutch. So they put him in grade one. so he sort of was what you would call a self-made man. And I would see what he touched in the community and the work he did. And he was very ahead of his time because I was the middle child. I was an older brother, myself, and a younger sister. And he never defined me.

because I was a girl I had to do this and the boy would do this and so I felt like I really came from a community both my parents were immigrants so I'm first generation of inclusivity land of opportunity be what you want to be

Gordon Sheppard (01:47.441)
Is there a favorite moment with your dad? just have to ask. Like is there sort of a moment or an insight or a story that kind of epitomizes what you're talking about?

Deborah Rosati (01:55.374)
Well, there's a multitude of them, but I will give you an example. I was probably only 12 or 13. I already started my first job being a paper person, paper delivery person. My dad was in the newspaper industry and I know that on Saturdays, if I could go to my dad's office and stuff envelopes, put files together, I was in my heaven. So whatever that took, and that was at a young age, I just thought he looked really important. I want to be important. What does that take?

Gordon Sheppard (02:24.796)
Wow, what a great way to start off and don't we get a very good sense of you and thankfully your parents, right? And that story that passes along to you. And I just mean to get a little bit more meat on the bones for maybe a bit of you so that we know how deep your time has run. You get out there, you probably got some education in there, maybe just knock off one or two of the senior roles that you've held in some time so we get a feel for just literally the pedigree that you do have.

Deborah Rosati (02:51.15)
Well, to go into business, I knew I needed a degree, so I went into business school. I chose an accounting profession, so I became a CEA early in my career. And I never thought twice about, you know, it's hard work. I never thought I'm a woman, I have to be treated differently. I just showed up as a professional each and every day. I article for my first...

term as a co-op student when I was 19 doing a tax season. So I've seen a lot. I really, my journey really went from an accounting professional to controller to CFO in industry and took a company from ground zero to a very successful exit as CFO in the tech sector. And that really led me to going into venture capital in the early 2000s, where I was serving on the boards of the portfolio companies. And that really started my board career.

before there was board education, board certification. So I was usually the only one around the room that looked like me, but I never was trying to be anyone other than myself.

Gordon Sheppard (03:59.133)
gonna sound funny. Is there a fan that kicked on in your room? Yeah, that's okay. You know what? I'm just gonna ask to start again. This will sound a bit odd. I just didn't know that that was gonna be there. Are you able to sort of turn it off that it's off or?

Deborah Rosati (04:02.282)
Yes, sorry.

Deborah Rosati (04:10.432)
No, I didn't. I can't do anything about it. can try to move to another room. My apologies. There are these, I'm, that's that loud. I can't do anything about it. It's in my room.

Gordon Sheppard (04:21.22)
It's just kind of what it is. Okay. No problem. just, let me, yeah, that's okay. We'll just start again and then it'll let me sort of do that. And I think we'll kind of see what we can do in audio post-production in case there's something that comes up. Okay, great. I'm just gonna get in there again. There's enough in here to start again, but if we can keep the same level of enthusiasm, we're good to go. Deborah, welcome to the show.

Deborah Rosati (04:24.514)
So let's start again. Yeah.

Deborah Rosati (04:43.936)
Thank you, Gord. Delighted to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (04:45.904)
Well, I just feel so lucky to have you here, because I've had a chance to interview you before. I've had a chance to see you in action at a conference, wowing an audience of hundreds of people with your education. I've got a feel for the deep, deep pedigree that you have in your business career and where it's led to this moment, this win that we're going to talk about here today. But there's a lot of people maybe that haven't met you. So if you had to introduce yourself, please take a moment to do that and let people know kind of who you are.

Deborah Rosati (05:10.51)
Well, I'd like to start off with a story because that really defines and shapes who you are. I wanted to be a businessman just like my father. And most people would go, but you're woman. And I know you have questions on that, but I think that was instrumental in the direction I took in my career.

Gordon Sheppard (05:28.06)
Well, when we have these people that we admire, our mentors, our parents, or whatever it is in our lives, they're very, very important. What was important about your father that made you want to take that direction?

Deborah Rosati (05:38.318)
Well, for both of my parents, they were immigrants, saw him first generation. My dad came to Canada when he was 14 from Holland. My mom came to Canada from Scotland when she was 19. you know, was this Canada at the time was a land of opportunity. It was post World War II. My dad came and he had to work really hard. He's what you would call self-made man because he didn't finish the proper education because he came and when he was in and they put him in grade one when he was 14.

So he had to develop, had to take night courses, he really worked hard and I could just see, you know, that level of work ethic but also showing up and just trying to build and grow and do better than when he came to Canada. And so just started seeing him in business and I really loved going to the office with him. I loved just seeing what he was doing and he never, neither of my parents defined me to say, you're a girl, you need to stay in this lane. It was, what do you want to be, where do you want to go?

you can do it.

Gordon Sheppard (06:40.412)
wow, what a great value set to get early, right? It's not right to be able to get that from them. So foundationally, you kind of know who you are. That would have helped you, you know, kind of get started in your career. And please take me through a couple of highlights down that timeline as you kind of got started yourself.

Deborah Rosati (06:44.832)
Deborah Rosati (06:57.358)
Well, I think to become a business man, business person, what does it take? So I chose business school. And then I chose a profession within that. said, OK, door A is becoming an accounting professional. So I became a CEA. But early in my career, did I love accounting? Not necessarily, but it was a means to an end. And I feel like having that as a profession for myself gave me the courage and confidence to go into the boardroom, to go at any

table because I knew my numbers and I had a really deep deep understanding of financials and that really helped me grow from being an accounting student to an accounting manager to a controller right up to CFO. As a professional CA, took a company from ground zero to a very successful exit and then I went into venture capital but I think the common theme throughout my career was been there done it what's next.

That was...

Gordon Sheppard (07:59.281)
And what's next came up thankfully for us. we don't have the 10 hours it would take to sort of pull it all apart, but we do hear this strong values foundation and then a strong set of opportunities that you kind of built yourself in a sense to take you all the way up that ladder. And the numbers people are the big winners in so many of those boardrooms and you know what it's like to be in there and you know what it...

you what it means to have earned that moment so that when your opinion counts, when you're asked for your opinion, it sticks for the right reasons because you can back it up. Which leads us to a little bit of what you're doing now. So there's a big anniversary that you're involved with right now. If you could just take me for a moment and introduce this big project that you're kind of involved with.

Deborah Rosati (08:40.342)
Well, ten years ago, I founded Women Get On Board on the back of a napkin and I knew that at that time women were asking me, how did you get into the boardroom, how did you get on a board? And I knew I wasn't novel. But for fifteen years prior to that, I usually was on around a boardroom table, usually one if not the only woman in the boardroom.

And I thought it's more than a coffee. It's more than a glass of wine. It's more than a dinner I'm going to create a community and so they founded women get on board in 2015 We are celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. We have over 850 members across Canada. It's a community and It's really founded on connecting promoting and empowering women to corporate boards And I'll come back to those three colors connecting promoting and empower

And so this year is a big year for us and we are celebrating our 10th anniversary. We kicked that off at our summit in May and we had a pinning ceremony and we're going right through to a TMX closing on September 25th to a reception. And you know what? We're really fortunate, the community behind us, whether it's partners, whether it's members, leaders of leading in the boardroom.

professionals that are governance professionals we've been fortunate to build and grow and have such a supportive community.

Gordon Sheppard (10:06.834)
Congratulations, 800 anybody, plus all of the impact that it's had over that time. Back of a napkin, you got this idea, you know there's a gap. What's interesting is your own perception wouldn't be that you just think for you it's probably sounded like work your whole life. Whereas there'd be other people that are coming through with different sort of female issues and we've got, know, DEI issues, all kinds of things start to get into play here. Back of a napkin. Back then,

Deborah Rosati (10:09.23)
Thank

Gordon Sheppard (10:31.974)
percentage of women on boards in Canada, and then take me to now, and what do you think the impact has been of your group specifically?

Deborah Rosati (10:38.264)
Well, as I said, I love numbers, so data speaks for itself. in 2015, not only were we coming out as in Women Get On Board, I founded it, the Ontario Securities Commission was coming out with this compliance explain regime for TSX listed companies, publicly listed companies in Canada. And so you had to have a benchmark. So in 2015, Oakslers created their first diversity disclosure practice.

Foundation, the number of women on publicly listed companies in 2015 was 12.1%. Fast forward to last year, the data will come out in the fall so I can only reference last year, that number got to 29.8%. However, the year before was it only marginally went up. we've kind of hit this

We're almost at 30%, but we're not there. In some industries like mining and tech and life sciences, they are not as high as that. Banking higher. And so in a perfect world, for me, people have asked me, well, when do you think women get on board? When do you think you've done your job?

And I would say when we get to gender parity, which means you're going to have 50 % representation. And we know coming out of business schools and law schools and medical, so more women are graduating. And so, you know, there's a pipeline issue, there's a confidence issue, but my work will not stop. The mission is strong until we get to gender parity. And there's data out there that says it'll take you well beyond the decade or the century. But I'm an eternal optimist. And I think one board

at a time and I like to think about the power of three. One woman on a board is token, two women on a board is presence, and three women on a board is a voice.

Gordon Sheppard (12:35.89)
That's a battle plan, right? We hear that and you're a numbers person, right? So we get 12 % when we start to track the numbers, whatever it is, 10 years ago. Now we get to this 29%. We know that for businesses, statistically, it's better when equity and inclusion is represented. It's better for their decision-making. It's better for all around for the people that benefit from their companies and all that kind of thing. And here you are with the battle cry in a sense to say,

Wait a minute, I know one with one, maybe we can get it to two and maybe we can get it to three and you're going kind of one board at a time. How interesting. So, but in the beginning, you just would have been someone running around with the back of a napkin, you know, 10 years ago and you may not have had a lot of influence since then. What are some of your proudest moments along the way to get it this far?

Deborah Rosati (13:20.824)
Well, Proudest Moment is coming into the 10th anniversary because we talked earlier just to be in business and to be sustainable and, you know, pivot through COVID and continue to show up every day with the battle cry. I do say I fight the fight every day. So thank you for calling the battle cry. But I am passionate about it and I believe in it. And, you know, I am an example. I am a role model and I really want

sure that that next generation of women corporate directors have the opportunity, have the doors open to them. I always say, you know, you get to the top of the elevator, you send that elevator down for someone else and then they, you know, we continue doing that.

And so for me, my proudest moments are to get to our 10th anniversary, know, showing up and being able to, beginning of the year, kind of map it out and say, okay, we want to do a TMX closing, put a proposal together. They were all in. What a great opportunity to support our 10th anniversary. We also have BMO. They're one of our national strategic partners. We have a BMO Celebrating Women on Boards program, which is honors women in the board

So last fall, you know, when I'm talking about coming into our 10th anniversary, we were doing our fifth or sixth year with them. I said, how about we do a five city tour? So we're doing a five city tour in October to celebrate women across the country. And we've added our lifetime achievement awards. you know, I think being a visionary and thinking ahead.

because you've got to have a team to execute and we're going to get into that anatomy, but having strong vision and having strong conviction and you know along the way you're going to pivot and sometimes you're going to think, oh my god, what was I thinking? You know, the swan that's graceful above the water paddling like heck down below the water, but really being having the courage and the confidence to say we've got it and we're going to celebrate it and this is the year to do it.

Gordon Sheppard (15:23.974)
Congratulations, it's super inspiring to hear not only the words that you're saying, but the way that you're saying them. I'm reaching back, I think I might be hearing, listening to your dad a little bit in this, you know what I mean? You said you started there and then you've gotten to put this lifetime together. And how nice at this time in your own journey to be on a very purpose-driven, you know, mission that is having, you know the impact that it's having already on the individuals you're connecting with, but also the societal implications and.

and just that leading edge to be a bright light in this area. What a great thing. So it leads me to my first question, which is if you had to describe your biggest win in the last while, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Deborah Rosati (16:03.753)
Well, wins can come in many different ways. And I think foundationally, I'd say one of the biggest wins I had and I didn't go looking for the win, it came to me. I got my honorary doctorate in 2023 from my alma mater. And I had a friend a few years before that had got her honorary doctorate. And all I said to myself was, I want one of those one day. Not thinking. I put things out to the world. Not thinking it would come back.

It came to me, I was nominated, I got the call from the president of the university and said, by the way, and I said, excuse me, pardon me, what is that? And so that is a lifetime of honoring you for your contributions in your life's work, right? From professionally to community. And to me, I don't characterize as a win, but I characterize it as a lifetime achievement of getting to that point and not looking for it, but it came to me.

And so to me that was a huge recognition and it really brought tears to my eyes and to this day You know, I put doctor in front of my name because they said this is honorary You should be you know being identified and acknowledged that way

Gordon Sheppard (17:18.812)
Remarkable, you know, we're down head down day to day. You're in the trenches. You're doing your work You're going to your board meetings. You're whatever doing all the things you're doing you start a back-of-a-napkin organization You get 800 people that come along You don't know in the middle of just simply doing That other people are ready to recognize that and see that and how nice to get a mirror up and go wait a second Look at what you've been doing and it sounds like you made the internal transition to accept it. Is that fair?

Deborah Rosati (17:44.16)
Thank you. You picked up on that. For about six months I have my other, I have my FCPA, so I'm a fellow CPA. I've been recognized by my profession. I have my ICD.D, you know, governance certification. So I get this and I really had to sit on it and own it. And then finally I said, okay, I'm going with it. But I can tell you, it took a while. It didn't feel right. It didn't feel like that's, should be called a doctor. I'm not asking you to call me Dr. Deborah Rosati. But when you asked about when and achievement,

You know, I think it was, it definitely has been a pinnacle in my 40 years.

Gordon Sheppard (18:19.89)
Well, that's great. so what I'd to jump into now is what I call the anatomy of a win, where we look at the strategy, the work plan, the people, operations, and results behind a win. And this is interesting. It's a lifetime win, in a sense. So again, we can't go through whatever, the minute by minute part. But we can kind of get to the strategy part first again. we'll talk about what were the, you say maybe the values, the goals, the vision behind getting this recognition.

Deborah Rosati (18:48.108)
Bye.

It was a lifetime, but I can't, would say in the last 10 years, my work for women got on board has been my everyday show up, tell the world this is what I'm doing. But I know I'm serving a higher purpose by doing it. I'm not doing it for myself. I've had the board roles. I've served on boards. I've chaired audit committees. I've chaired nominating. I've been lead director. I am not looking for myself. I am serving others and giving it is a higher purpose. So it's got

that calling that you have. And so for me, when I started Women Get On Board, the vision was really, really strong is to increase the representation of women on boards. That's the vision. The mission was to put a company together to connect, promote, and empower. And as I spoke about those earlier, those are the three pillars in which I run the business. Are we empowering? Are we connecting? And are we promoting? And if it doesn't fit one of those pillars, we're not doing it, right?

Gordon Sheppard (19:48.306)
You must jump out of bed in the morning, I would think, right?

Deborah Rosati (19:48.448)
It's... I jump out probably before I'm even awake.

Gordon Sheppard (19:55.315)
Because you got so much to do, right? There's just so much, there's a lot of road to pave here and you've got it going, you've got momentum now, the recognition that came from this honorary degree. Anytime we have sort of a win, there's always, you know, the strategy, we have a work plan. There's sort of a start moment and sort of you know, how long it takes. Funny enough, this timeline here might be, what is it, 40 years? You know what mean? Like, what would you say the start, what's the start point and how long does it take to get an honorary degree? Is it four decades or how long?

Deborah Rosati (20:24.514)
Well, I guess it depends on the individuals. Some take longer than others. I think there's no timeline. I think it's where you are. And what I do want to share with you, I want to pause for a moment because when you talk about where are you and why did it happen.

There's these three chapters in your life. And Gina Cody is a successful entrepreneur, engineer. There's an engineering school, Concordia named after her. And I was reading a book and they were talking about these three chapters of life that she talked about. The first chapter is preparing for your life's work. So, articling, educating, interning, you know, you're getting ready to do your life's work.

The second chapter is doing your life's work. So rising the ranks, going up the ladder, giving back to community. And then the third chapter is giving back to your life's work. And so when I read that, I was already giving back to my life's work about elevating and amplifying that next generation of women corporate direction.

So when I think about my work today, so when I, I've really been in my third chapter for many years now because it is really a social purpose and it's about giving back to your life's work. And so the honorary doctorate I think is that combination of looking back and saying you have been giving back to your life's work.

Gordon Sheppard (21:48.435)
funny if I love and thank you for the author and that eloquent sort of framework that's there. The Malcolm Gladwell, you have blown past your 10,000 hours. Let's call it 50 and 60,000 hours with another 30, 40,000 to come. Like in terms of, cause this is nonstop for you in terms of how far it's going to take you for the remainder of your life with what you're doing here as well. Wonderful. So we've got strategy, work plan. There's always people involved in making something happen. You are a key driver.

How would you describe, we heard a little bit about what you learned from your dad, but how would you describe yourself and your attitude throughout time to sort of get you to this moment and to get you to this win?

Deborah Rosati (22:22.254)
you

Deborah Rosati (22:26.618)
Well, I was thinking about this question about people. I think if your vision is strong and your conviction is strong, people will follow. But you also have to very strong values. And when I started Women Get On Board, I put my own values first, right? Because I said, I can only show up. And those values have been true to how I've grown the company, to how I've built the team. The first one is about being authentic.

because as Oscar Wilde says, you can only be yourself. The second one is basically, I'm just getting my notes here. Ooh, I don't know. The second one is about exceeding beyond, like communicating beyond, right? Just don't communicate. But what are the steps that you can do to go beyond? And then I wrote them all down, yes. Third one, be passionate in everything you do.

Because if you're passionate, it's contagious and people will see it. But if you're not enthusiastic and passionate about your work, how are you going to get other people engaged? And the last one is be engaged and take initiative.

Gordon Sheppard (23:32.34)
This is awesome. And so what we can do here, just for a second, help me out with an example. If you've met someone who's thinking, learning about women get on board as an example, and maybe there's someone who are, you see them, they're 25 years ago and they're you in a sense, they're coming up, they know they want to get there, they've got the attitude. How would you describe being authentic with them in that conversation? How would you describe going beyond in that conversation? How would you describe, just take me through those four things and set me up with something like an example, like.

Deborah Rosati (23:51.018)
Show me what is yourself.

Deborah Rosati (23:59.512)
Well, being authentic, I can only show up as myself. I'm not trying to be you, Gord. I'm not trying to be my father. I'm not trying to be Gina Kodik. I'm not trying to be anyone else other than myself. And I think when you know you're showing up as your true self and your authentic self, it allows you to be at your best because your best is only your best.

Gordon Sheppard (24:21.629)
Wonderful. And then there's going beyond, which is sort of not taking no for an answer to a certain degree, or someone's finding hitting a limit and then going beyond. And then there's this idea of getting into going even further with it as you go forward. We've got a really good sense of you and thanks for being so well-prepared with those wonderful anecdotes and being really, really clear. There's other people involved in a win, right? We talked about your parents as a starting point. Who are the other sort of key people that have been influences along the way? Perhaps they're...

co-workers, maybe people that you've mentored, who are some of the other key influencers, and we can't get them all, but maybe one or two along the way that have been important.

Deborah Rosati (24:55.854)
Well, think mentors are really important, mentors and sponsors. the difference, mentors are those that kind of coach, advise. The sponsors just put your name forward and they say, yeah, you've got to speak to Deborah. And I would say, unconditionally, my mentors and my sponsors have all been men.

I very rarely had a female boss, a female sponsor, not because I wasn't around women, but I was just in the rooms. So I had some really high bars to meet and I always wanted to show up the most prepared. I wanted to show up that they were going to ask me to take that next opportunity. And I don't think I had no in my vocabulary. I think I have no in my vocabulary now because I just want to show up

be my best, do my best, deliver my best, and go beyond. So if, and I had one boss in particular that told me, if you're going to say no, you have to give 10 reasons why you're going to say no.

And it was, was in venture capital, I was saying no to a portfolio, potential investment, and I was sweating. I was like, oh my God, I can't say no. And all he said to me is, well maybe it wasn't 10. Say no, five reasons. Did that email, and he said, okay, thanks. So I think sometimes we sweat out when we say no, but if you give the reasons why.

and then or hear someone else. So I always say, when you're saying no to a board opportunity, who are the three other people that you can put forward?

Gordon Sheppard (26:27.665)
Wonderful. So we can hear, if we get to this honorary degree, there's not just you starting, this isn't 19 year old you, you know what I mean, that we heard about. This is you accumulating over the decades, these mentors, these sponsors, these influences that you've had along the way, the experiences that you've had along the way. And now this chance to be, you know, building out women get on board, the hundreds of women that you've influenced, the companies and their bottom lines that you've actually impacted by getting those women into those right roles. And then you can hear all the way along the sort of,

attitude adjustments and things you've been able to make as your authentic self grows and grows and grows. Can't wait to talk to you in 10 years, because you're going to get even smarter and wiser. I can hear it the way that you've got sort of your own continual learning process as you go forward. Great. People involved. So we said strategy, work plan, people. Operationally, we've to get some things done. If we're going to receive an honorary degree, there's a few things to pick up along the way. You mentioned a bunch of them, the credentials. So business school, ICD.

you know, you're a CA and you're doing that kind of thing. Any other sort of operational highlights along the way that you would kind of want to point out that have contributed to this body of work, this lifetime body of work that got recognized?

Deborah Rosati (27:34.478)
Well, I think you cannot. I think you picked up on a continuous improvement. So yes, been there, done it. Can we improve it? What can be better? Using technology to transform. you you know, if you're going to be efficient, you're going to scale, you're going to grow. You need to build in technology. You need to build in platforms, something that's, you know, continuous, it's scalable. And so when you're looking at that, you're always thinking about operationalizing. Okay, I've got this one area I'm very proud of is we launched our first

mentorship program in 2021 and that was unique. was matching aspiring women corporate directors with experienced women corporate directors and I set it up. We are now into our fifth cohort. We've had 60 mentees through.

and 37 mentors, because sometimes mentors will stay for a second year with a new mentee, but always was, you know, having the foundation and then every year when we go to do the next cohort, what can we do different? How can we do it better? We look for feedback, but having in order to be able to run it and scale it and continue it is you have to have strong structure and strong foundation. And it's like building a house. If you don't have the foundation, it's not it's not going to stand. It's not going to be scalable and it's not going to sustain.

day.

Gordon Sheppard (28:49.873)
You know, and we know when these mentorship relationships, what I can hear is the reason that you're on the fifth and sixth cohort is those values that you talked about at the beginning are being infused. The mentorship ones can get too loose, too quick, and we can lose momentum. But the fact that you've actually demonstrated that kind of going forward is fantastic. And that's sort of a good operational highlight to sort of be aware of in this sort of whole journey. Finally, we get down to, we said strategy, work plan, people, operations.

There's results, there's quantitative results and there's qualitative results. A quantitative result is somewhere in there, there's a piece of paper that says Dr. Rizadeh. Is that fair? Like that's a quantitative, that happened, it actually occurred. It would be a quantitative thing. Any quantitative or qualitative results that you'd to point out for this win?

Deborah Rosati (29:24.683)
you

Deborah Rosati (29:34.35)
Well, the life's work, I would say. So in the case of women get on board, a quantitative result would be the number of women that get on boards every year, we promote them, right? And so, the quantitative wins, like we say, over 75 % of our members have been appointed to a board, and we measure that every year.

It's very quantifiable, right? And that helps drive that data point of the number of women on boards, right? The other data point that I'm very proud of is, if you take the TSX listed companies, less than 10%, say about 8.8 % of the chairs of boards are female chairs.

we can do better, why are we there? So one of the things we created a couple years ago, I'm always filling that gap, so talking to these women, it's lonely being a chair of a board, so we created a chairs forum, and that is only for women, it's a peer group, and it's for women that are either chairs or vice chairs, because it's about how do you lead and serve on boards, and it takes a lot to say I'm gonna take that seat, right? It's a lot easier to let other people, so when I think of that, if we can have

impact on building that next generation of women chairs for boards, then we're doing it one chair at a time.

Gordon Sheppard (31:04.155)
One board at a time, one chair at a time. You can hear the iterative, not quite startup, it's not a startup, but there's something about the iterative nature of reacting to the marketplace while you still have some basically forward momentum. There's all good reasons to kind of keep going forward with what you're doing. How nice, thanks for putting together a body of life's work that we can celebrate here and chat about from a wins perspective and then also women get on board, the mission driven work that you're doing. If you had to sort of...

have a comment, final, you know, it's leaders that listen to this show. If you had to just talk to, you know, I'm gonna say a woman leader in this case, because that's where you're specialized. It could be leaders in general if you want to. What sort of piece of advice do you like to pass along to leaders if you had sort of a, just a few sentences to say to them?

Deborah Rosati (31:49.294)
Wow. To sum it up, I would say to have courage, to have courage to speak up, to have courage to make change and have courage to show up every day with your beliefs.

Gordon Sheppard (32:03.059)
Pretty succinct. It's so good to have you on the show. I really appreciate it. If people need to get in touch with you, what's the best way?

Deborah Rosati (32:09.007)
LinkedIn, Deborah Rosati, Dr. Deborah Rosati. I'm there.

Gordon Sheppard (32:13.053)
Thanks for throwing in the doctor there at the end. can hear it's absorbed and it's all good. Deborah, thank you so much for being on the show.

Deborah Rosati (32:19.096)
Thank you, Gordon. Appreciate it.

Gordon Sheppard (32:23.357)
That worked out great.

Deborah Rosati (32:25.166)
Well, thank you. Sorry about the... I literally, that is an issue. You hit us. We have this, I'm in a condo. We have like industrial generator air conditioning. You don't know how many times we've said that to me. You're like, that go on and like, it's white noise to me now.