Guy Primus is a technology executive with over 20 years of experience operating at the intersection of media and innovation,. He is currently the CEO of Valence Enterprises, which creates new paths to success for Black professions, and is launching the BONDS executive development community this summer. Guy is also Co-Founder of The Board Challenge, whose mission is to improve the representation of Black directors in the boardrooms of U.S. companies. In this episode he talks about ongoing efforts to accelerate the diversification of boards of directors in U.S. companies.
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Quotes
“For too long Black professionals have been marching to the beat of someone else’s drummer. So, what we want to do at Valence is create new paths where people can recognize their contributions, their excellence, bring that to the table and have that be recognized by the organizations that they’re a part of.”
“The idea for the Board Challenge came from my friend, Brad Gerstner, his thought was: “Hey, how do I affect change on a macro level so that there are more black representatives on boards.” We’re starting with black board members, but the ultimate goal is to have more diverse boards in general.”
Big Ideas/Thoughts
There are two ways to take The Board Challenge pledge. One is if you don’t have a black board member you are pledging to add a black board member within 12 months of taking the pledge. So, that is how we are going to get more black board members on companies, recognizing, “Hey, I don’t have one. This is a good chance for me to add one. I’m going to take the Pledge. I’m going to make a public pronouncement of my desire and I’m going to be held accountable.”
If your board already has a Black board member, then you can take the Pledge to support our movement because you know it’s important for society, it’s important for the boards that we sit on to actually make sure that they are representative, and it’s good for the country, for the economy and for corporate America in general.
There are still a hundred S&P 500 companies that don’t have a single black board member, so that’s a good place to start, but our goal ultimately is fully representative boards in all public and private companies, that’s where we want to get to. But if you tell people that,” Hey, we want a representative board” the inaction probably will dwarf the level of action, so right now we’re focused on adding black board members.
Valence is also helping to solve the perceived issue of a lack of qualified board talent by introducing board service as an aspiration to the members of our BONDS executive development community. Black professionals need to start thinking about serving on boards early, and not wait until they are ready to retire to begin preparing themselves for board service.
Transcript
Joe: [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to On Boards, a deep dive at what drives business success. I’m Joe Ayoub and I’m here with my co-host, Raza Shaikh. On Boards is about boards of directors and advisors, and all aspects of governance. Twice a month, this is the place to learn about one of the most critically important aspects of any company or organization, its board of directors or advisors, as well as the important issues that are facing boards, company leadership and stakeholders.
Raza: Joe and I speak with a wide range of guests and talk about what makes a board successful or unsuccessful, what it takes to be an effective board member, what challenges boards are facing and how are they assessing those challenges and how to make your board one of the most valuable assets of your organization.
Joe: Our guest today is Guy Primus. [00:01:00] Guy is a technology executive with over 20 years of experience operating at the intersection of media and innovation. He is currently the CEO of Valence, whose mission is to create new paths of success for black professionals.
Raza: Guy is also the co-founder of The Board Challenge, whose mission is to improve the representation of Black directors in the boardroom of US companies. He is an experienced board member currently serving on boards of several companies, including The Virtual Reality Company and the Southern California Public Radio.
Joe: Welcome, Guy. It’s great to have you today with us on On Boards.
Guy: It’s great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Raza: The description of Valence is a company whose mission is to “create new paths to success for Black professionals.” What does that mean?
Guy: Well, I’m going to make a slight correction there because I think it’s important. It’s a two-letter word, but the kind [00:02:00] of “to success,” I would say “of success,” because we really want to consider success as a journey, not just a destination, right? So, we want people to celebrate every moment along their career journey, but I think really the important part of that mission is that for too long black professionals have been kind of marching to the beat of someone else’s drummer. So, what we want to do is create those new paths where people can recognize their contributions, their excellence, bring that to the table and have that be recognized by the organizations that they’re a part of.
So, we look at that as a kind of a two-sided equation. One is that we want the black professionals themselves to be excellent in every way. We want them to be supported. We want them to have an incredible community. We want them to kind of not suffer from low aim. We want them to aim high.
Then from the corporate side, really understand that there is an artistic element of your black culture that can be brought to bear. There is a lived experience that is atypical of many organizations, [00:03:00] and all of that benefits the organization if it’s managed properly. So, when we talk about the new paths of success, it is about, yes, the individual and kind of finding where he, she, or they are in their career and where they aspire to be, but it’s also a recognition by the organization that the path less traveled might be the right one for the company and for the individual.
Raza: Great. Great mission, Guy. In essence, would you say that the Valence is a community or database of black professionals?
Guy: Yeah, I would definitely not say database. We want to maintain the humanity, honestly, right? And that’s coming from an engineer, but yeah, we want to make sure that, yes, it is, we do use a database, and it is 15,000 professionals brought together by technology, but we want to make sure that we maintain, again, the humanity, the connective tissue, the mutual respect for each other, the shared progress, right? So, all that happens. Yes, it can happen algorithmically, but it’s better when it happens in person and with heart. And so, yeah, we definitely use the word “community.”
[00:04:00] Raza: And when you bring this community together, do you have a process of vetting before you add them to the community?
Guy: Yeah. I mean, honestly, we want people to be who they say they are. That’s the most important thing, just stand up and be who you say you are. And really beyond that, we want people to share in this belief that success for black professionals is long overdue, right? We could go into the details, but a lot of success has been had by select individuals. The problem is that you can enumerate and you can name those individuals. So, all we ask is that people want the best for kind of some of the members of the community that have been under appreciated for kind of 401 years.
Raza: What type of career opportunities are available through Valence?
Guy: Honestly, everything from entry-level engineering, kind of imagined, kind of front end, kind of dev work products. We’re actually kind of searching for a head of community personally at Valence and a head of product, and so it’s everything from that. We have private equity firms looking for associates and partners, [00:05:00] and we have people looking for board members and C-suite executives, so it really runs the gamut.
We just really focus on mostly, and again, I would use this analogy, national, right? And again, assuming that engineers are in that category, but even though the community is open, what our sweet spot is, it’s kind of that where there’s career progression, even if it’s an innovation economy company or a Fortune 100 behemoth that’s been around for time eternal, we just focus on that where there’s a career progression that is well understood and well-defined.
Raza: That is tremendous. On the company and organization side, how do you enlist them to provide opportunities? And what are you looking for in those organizations that are able to absorb members of the Valence community?
Guy: Yeah, I think really, for the most part, people are aware that diversity breeds excellence, right? It breeds a different way of thinking, different approaches, different solutions, different considerations and framing of problems, and so the companies that come to us [00:06:00] generally have an awareness that, “Hey, we’re not doing a good enough job.”
We have 12 to 14% of the population that’s African-American or black depending on how you kind of categorize it. And especially in Silicon Valley, some of the biggest companies have a workforce that’s just 3% or less, right? When you look at Fortune 500 CEOs, again, those numbers start to get lower and lower, and the average starts to get thinner and thinner, and so generally, the companies that are coming to us are saying, “Hey, we know that this is an opportunity, right? Not necessarily a problem, but we realize this is an opportunity. And we’d like to avail ourselves of the opportunity of the excellence that we have not tapped into. We don’t like groupthink. We would love the diversity of opinion. We would love to kind of make sure that the people who are our customers, that are our partners are represented in our employee base. So, they’re coming to us with opportunities and they’re just saying, “Hey, we want to consider the members of your community that we may not have considered before, and that we don’t know.”
The reason why Valence was started was because people would come to Kobie [00:07:00] Fuller who’s kind of my board member and kind of founder of Valence and just saying, “Hey, I don’t know where to find black talent. Can you help me? I would love to have a black product manager because we’re dealing in a realm that kind of where black consumers are predominant. Can you help me find a black product manager? Can you help me find someone, who as I’m developing algorithms and artificial intelligence, that will help us eliminate some of the bias that is implicit kind of in our coding?”
So, that’s where it started. That goes back to your question about the database. There is absolutely a database and we avail ourselves of data to make those connections, but the companies really just want to connect with and consider excellence, and they just want to come to us because they’re not sure where to find it as relates to black talent.
Raza: And Guy, we’ve spoken about this many times on this podcast that the excuse of the pipeline or people not being available or not being able to find them is long gone, and I think Valence itself is a testament of that, that if you are looking, you should be able to find good folks to [00:08:00] bring for your company.
Joe: If you’re really looking, you can find.
Guy: And again, I would like to lower that bar because you really shouldn’t have to look that hard. I’m saying, if you come to Valence, you don’t have to look hard at all. We can help you kind of find those individuals, but also I want to kind of talk about one of the things that you brought up, which is the word “pipeline.”
As an engineer, it bugs me. It really bothers me, because to me, a pipeline has a point A and a point Z and has a homogeneous product flowing through it, and that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about people. We’re talking about people with different backgrounds. We’re talking about people with different strengths and weaknesses. We’re talking about different approaches to solving a similar problem. So, I try to think of this, again, wearing my industrial engineering hat, as a system.
There is a challenge with the system. Some people don’t know where to look. There definitely is a problem with the system of people kind of making their way through the system. You have a really incredible raw material that doesn’t come out on the CEO kind of in the C-suite at the end, right. That not necessarily a problem with the [00:09:00] individual. That’s a problem with the system.
So, that’s what we look to kind of solve with Valence, too. It’s not just about finding the black talent, but ensuring, but again, this goes to this paths to success or paths of success that we want to be with them every step along the way to help facilitate the journey to excellence.
Raza: And to improve that system, Guy, does valence also offer programs to help develop further members of the community?
Guy: It’s funny that you should ask. We didn’t send that question to you ahead of time, did we?
Raza: No.
Guy: The reason why I say that is actually we’re launching an executive development program in May. So, in just a few weeks, we are launching an executive development program that really speaks to your question, that it’s not just about kind of getting people into this system. It’s about shepherding them through, just like you would, I use the analogy of a carbon, right?
Carbon has two naturally occurring forms. There’s graphite and, and there’s diamonds, and when you find a diamond, a lot of time it’s a diamond in the rough, and you don’t just kind of send that through the pipeline and hope it turns out on the other end. You hire a [00:10:00] master diamond cutter to make sure that it has the brilliance and resiliency and polish that you want it to have.
So, we think of this the same way, and that’s what our kind of forthcoming Valence Bonds program does. It’s to take those individuals who have been brought into our system and who ordinarily or otherwise might be left to wander in the wilderness, and we’re giving them kind of an incredible path of success and connecting them with like-minded individuals.
We have a lot of other programs, too. We have something called the Valence funding network where we have 256 entrepreneurs in our program that we connect with investors and we connect with each other, and we connect with opportunities. We have another program that we call Boosts that really are one-on-one micro mentorships. So, if you put up your hand and say, “Hey, I need help with blank,” and we let you fill in that blank, and then we kind of connect with people who have volunteered and consider themselves experts in that area.
Again, we’re not just focused on the recruiting piece, it’s the retention, the promotion and the engagement piece that really is going to [00:11:00] make the difference in this system that we talk about.
Raza: I love the name Valence Bonds.
Guy: So, you get the reference, right?
Joe: It’s a great add to what you already have. I think it’s terrific that you’re adding that on and it’s next month you said that you hope to do this.
Guy: Yeah. We’re announcing it and launching it in May, and the program will start this summer.
Joe: Fantastic.
So, I want to ask you about The Board Challenge, which I think is a phenomenal mission-driven organization. You co-founded The Board Challenge in September of 2020 to help accelerate the diversification of corporate boards in the United States. How did you become involved and what was your motivation to do it?
Guy: How did I become involved? Because people assume that because I was a co-founder, it was my idea, and it wasn’t. I’m the one black co-founder of The Board Challenge, but the idea actually came from my friend, Brad Gerstner, and Brad is an incredible individual. He’s enjoyed incredible success, but last summer Brad attended an event with his son who said, “Hey Dad, this is incredible. I understand [00:12:00] the challenges that black people face in America,” and Brad obviously being a really successful professional, he heard that and then his son asked him a really profound question, “This is great, but what are you going to do about it?”
So, Brad took that to heart. When your son, when your kids ask you something that profound, you can’t just ignore it, right? There’s no way to ignore it, and so Brad thought about it, and Brad was on the board of a number of companies and he considered doing what Alexis Ohanian did and stepping down from one of those positions.
We, actually, in the course of The Board Challenge, talked to him last week, and he was affected profoundly by the fact that his action really spurred The Board Challenge, but that’s what Brad was looking to do, was step down. He really had to ask himself, “Well, what is it that I can do?” And he considered stepping down from one of the board positions that he was on, but he realized that because he had so much influence as he talked to people, they gave them the idea of, “Well, why don’t you start a movement. Not just kind of open up one board seat, but start a movement that can shine a spotlight on where there’s opportunity for others to [00:13:00] add members of the board. There are a lot of companies that still today don’t have a single black board member.”
So, that’s what Brad did, it’s to kind of step back and say, “Hey, how do I affect change on a macro level so that there are more black representatives on boards, and we’re starting with black board members, but the ultimate goal is to have more diverse boards in general.”
So, I was one of the early calls that Brad made, because we were a business school classmates and because of my work at Valence, we connected, and it was really kind of just us working through some of the opportunities and really defining how we want it to go to market. So, it was almost a typical business school case of like, “Hey, if you want to really affect change, how do you do it and not looking at it as let’s write a check thing or kind of let’s act as an individual, but kind of let’s really catalyze a movement to really increase representation on boards.
Joe: I want to go back to how it happened. I love the fact that our kids sometimes are the ones that hold us accountable for what we say. Who else is going to do that? If you think [00:14:00] about it, I think it’s great.
Guy: That’s a really good point. They’re not afraid of not getting in the next deal or not being promoted or any of that stuff. They have no fear. So, I believe the children are the future, so we have to listen to them.
Joe: I’m with you on that for sure. Did you talk to other organizations that are involved in trying to work on board diversification before you launched The Board Challenge?
Guy: Yeah, I think it was necessary, and one of the things I told Brad is that, “Hey, we’re treading on grounds where other people have walked. So, this is not a new problem. It’s not a new kind of opportunity. This is something that people have been talking about for many, many years, and so we have to educate ourselves, but more importantly, we want to be part of the solution and not just kind of a distraction and really looking at this as, again, an ecosystem.”
So, understanding what others are doing and really doing our due diligence to find how we. And to the greater benefit of society, and that’s the way that we approached it. It wasn’t kind of, “Hey, let’s just go off [00:15:00] and do this.” We called, I would say, 20 or 30 kind of black board members, those who are on boards, and kind of told them what we’re doing, and some of them came on board and kind of gave us their immediate stamp of approval. Some said, “Hey, well, I’m doing this over here, but I’m fully supportive, so you can count on me.”
Everyone is approaching this with the same mentality, which is a collaborative spirit, and there was no other way, honestly. We weren’t just going to set up another tent in the wilderness and hope that people will kind of follow our lead.
Joe: Yeah. Good. So, how have you developed a network of the companies to ask them to take the pledge?
Guy: Yeah, that’s actually the key to success here because, again, each of us comes to the table, so myself and Brad Gerstner and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who brought her CEO, Shannon Gordon, from the board list. Each of us came with a network. A lot of times those networks overlapped. It was great when it did, because kind of hearing three voices or four voices was much more impactful than hearing one. Each of us came with the network and we all picked up the phone and just dialed. We dialed for support [00:16:00] from the individuals that we knew that were serving on boards and that were head of nom and gov committees and that were CEOs.
Then a miraculous thing happened, which was people started saying, “Hey, let me call for you.” So, one of the recent successes that we had is Michael Milken, who met Brad and was really impressed with the mission, and Michael and his team, Ronnie Wiessbrod, over there have been making calls for us and, and kind of setting up meetings, and so those go fantastically well, because, again, Michael has an incredible track record of decades of success and he brought that to the table.
Again, we’re talking about this ecosystem, Ken Frazier at Merck and Les Brun, it really is those companies. Shellye Archambault, Rodney Adkins, all of those guys are picking up the phone and calling for us and making introductions and lending their support, and that’s really when this movement starts to catalyze and it starts to become more than just the collection of individual forces, but an irresistible force.
Joe: Now, what does it mean when you ask them to take the pledge? What are they pledging to do and how [00:17:00] do you follow up on the commitment they’re making to you?
Guy: Yeah, so that’s actually a really great question and we get asked that all the time, so thanks for that. There are two ways to take the pledge. One is that you don’t have a black board member and you are pledging to add a black board member within 12 months of taking the pledge. So, that is how we are actually going to get more black board members on companies. Again, recognizing, “Hey, I don’t have one. This is a good chance for me to add one. I’m going to take the pledge. I’m going to make a public pronouncement of my desire and I’m going to be held accountable.” So, we follow up.
We actually have an executive director that we hired recently, Sheryl Hilliard Tucker, who had come in, and she has an incredible kind of background in this area, black enterprise and others. So, she is kind of running the organization now that’s holding those in individuals accountable, but again, it’s made with good faith, and so we’re helping wherever we can to make sure that those companies find the right board members. So, that’s the first flavor.
The second flavor is, [00:18:00] “Hey, I already have a black board member, but I am pledging my support to your movement because I know it’s important. I know it’s important for society, and I know it’s important for the boards that we, kind of as a board members and CEOs, sit on to actually make sure that our boards are representative, and so we think that’s good for the country. We think it’s good for the economy. We think it’s good for corporate America in general.” So, that flavor is, “Hey, I just support you and I lend my name and my voice to this movement.”
So, that those individuals that are looking for board members, if there’s an open seat, they consider a black board member, if those organizations that don’t yet have a black board member, they see me, they hear me, they know me, that my voice resonates, and they’re going to now consider adding a black board member, because again, this movement that has been catalyzed is it’s not a one size fits all. It’s not a prescriptive kind of pronouncement. It is kind of, “Here’s the challenge. Here’s an opportunity. Let’s work together to solve.”
Joe: How did you develop the list of eligible board members to [00:19:00] place on these boards?
Guy: Yeah. So, I’ll say we don’t have a list. There are dozens of lists that exist. There are dozens of companies who are not-for-profit and for-profit organizations, that are kind of dedicated to helping companies find board members, and so all we’re doing is saying, “Hey, take the pledge. We will make your pronouncement public. We’ll hold you accountable, and then we’ll introduce you to a litany of organizations that can help you find the right board member for you. Everything from warm introductions, and you kind of saying, “Hey, I’m targeting this individual. You know him or her. I’ve already identified someone and I’d love to kind of get to meet them” to “I have no clue, but here’s what we generally look for.”
We started off with the Boardlist, obviously, because of Sukhinder and Shannon being on board early, but we have major search firms and we have companies that do a fractional CEO placement and every flavor that you can imagine, we’re in the business of helping solve this problem, so it’s not our list because our list is, by definition, the moment you [00:20:00] release it, even if it were comprehensive, it would be incomplete, because there’s always a new qualified person. So, we leave that to the ecosystem and we just make the connections.
Joe: So, a question that I know you’ve been asked is, have you got pushback because The Board Challenge is focused exclusively on black board members? As important as that is, there are some that might say, “Well, why not diversification in general?”
Guy: Yeah, I would say, yes, we absolutely have, and I think that’s not uncommon and not unexpected. So, the answer that we have is this, there was a moment in time that this makes sense and that this is right now where companies are waking up and understanding what their history has meant, and their lack of kind of representation has kind of birth in a variety of fashion.
I think people want to do something, and the challenge is if you make it so broad and so general, nothing happens, and so the commitment that we have at The Board Challenge is this, [00:21:00] we’re spending our first year dedicated to adding black board members, because, again, it’s very tangible. It’s something, again, if you can go back to 1619 and think about kind of how we arrived on the shores of America and the challenges that we’ve gone through. Again, you can look at the numbers. I’m an engineer. Gap analysis is my friend. You look at the numbers about how were disproportionately underrepresented in all shapes, forms and fashions of America, but especially in the board ranks, so you go there.
There are still a hundred S&P 500 companies that don’t have a single black board member, so that’s a good place to start, but our goal ultimately is representative boards. That’s really where we want to get to. But, again, if you just kind of tell people that,” Hey, we want a representative board.” The inaction probably will dwarf the level of action.
So, again, the other thing is that you can go through every company’s website or their annual report, their 10-K, and you can look up the names. In some, again, it might be a lot of work, but you can look up the names [00:22:00] in those reports that are of the board members, and you can, for the most part, identify who the black candidates are.
We would love to have more Latinx candidates on boards as well. That’s something that’s really, really important. It’s a little harder to do, just to be frank. Women, it’s a little easier. LGBTQ, it’s almost impossible from the picture or a name, you can’t do it.
So, again, this being a public pronouncement of the desire to have a diverse board, and we know that once you have a much more diverse board, those board members feel free to speak up and they can affect change from the inside. So, that’s what this is about. This is a stepwise process to get more representative boards, and we’re just starting with the zeitgeist and with the ability to kind of have a public pronouncement of this state.
Joe: What has been the biggest challenge or challenges that you’ve encountered so far?
Guy: Well, I think that one of the big challenges is that most boards are somewhat, especially at the very beginning, it started off very homogeneous. So, [00:23:00] you know that you can add someone who you trust and you look to your inner circle, and that inner circle is generally homogeneous. So, the network effect of adding to a board is challenging because a lot of people don’t have a deep bench of black candidates or women candidates that they kind of were in fraternity with or members of their country club or what have you. Or even the private schools, so that’s where a lot of people meet their board members at those places that they frequent, the houses of worship, and if we’re not there, we don’t show up on their short shortlist. So, that’s been the biggest challenge, it’s just kind of making people aware that, “Hey, even if you recognize this as a challenge and an opportunity, you don’t necessarily know how to solve the problem.” So, that’s been one of the challenges.
The other challenge has been that a lot of companies want public board service already. So, they’re shooting really, really high, and they’re saying, “Hey, I want someone who served on a Fortune 500 board.” And again, when you start doing that list, you can enumerate [00:24:00] and that the same kind of 20 or 30 board candidates serve on multiple boards, and so there’s there’s been not an expansion of the circle.
Now, very recently that’s changed. So, I can tell you that my friends, people that I’ve talked to, people that I kind of go to the playground with, they’re starting to serve on many more boards and they’re getting many more opportunities, and now the same thing is happening to them. So, the circle is slowly expanding.
So, I look at someone like Salaam Coleman Smith, who’s a friend, who last year joined Pinterest board and this year joined the board of the Gap. I can tell you that three people have reached out to me and said, “Do you know Salaam? Would you mind introducingher to me?” She didn’t have any boards last year. Now, she has board opportunities being thrown at her feet. So, we need to expand the kind of the circle from which people or the kind of pond from which people fish.
Raza: This is along the lines where our friend, Matt Blumberg of Bolster.com, mentions this as board experience problem [00:25:00] versus board readiness. Any thoughts on how basically, just like in the Valence community, part of it is polishing the diamond in the rough, that aspiring board members can do to become board ready?
Guy: Yeah, absolutely. I talk about this a lot. So, Matt is also a friend of mine. I’m a big fan of Matt. He’s helping me kind of guide my own board path. So, Matt is a great wealth of information. And one of the things that I did was I joined a Black Corporate Board Readiness Program that is at Santa Clara University and the Silicon Valley Executive Center.
It was tremendous. I have to say it. I’ve been on this journey for seven years to join, not necessarily a public board, but a big board. This is something I’ve been working on for seven years, and going through this kind of BCBR program at Santa Clara University, it was very, very eye opening because not only did they have a curriculum that they put together, which was fantastic, but they have had mentors and sponsors that were [00:26:00] parts of the program who were those people that I talked about, so Shellye Archambault and Barry Lawson Williams. It was Ken and Caretha Coleman who are kind of the godmother and godfather of black Silicon Valley with really, really incredible wealth of public and private company directors that came and gave their opinions and their perspectives and their recommendations of how to develop this.
But the other thing is understanding that we need to start. This is where Valence kind of plays, right? We need to start seeding the idea of board leadership at a very early stage in their career, because by the time you get to 40, you haven’t done the work that requires where you could have been working on that all along. You could have been serving on not-for-profit boards in your neighborhood. You could have been serving on, you mentioned Southern California Public Radio.
It’s something I’m very passionate about. I’m in media, they needed board members and they wanted to make sure that they had a diverse and representative Los Angeles to talk to, and so it was very easy for me to say yes to that, but if I’m not thinking about what my path is, [00:27:00] then I don’t know that I should be doing this earlier than later, and by the time you get to 50 or where I am now, it’s kind of like there’s a mad scramble for the best boards and that track record helps you stand out.
I think the training piece and then the awareness piece and then kind of just jumping in and doing it, find something you’re passionate about and serve that organization because it will lead to connections. It will lead to understanding. It will lead to expertise that then benefits you when you are going for those public boards later.
Raza: Yeah. So it is training. It is nonprofit or smaller boards. And it is also that have you been in the presence of boards, you’re presenting to the boards, you’re often in the boardroom for other reasons, and that makes you ultimately ready. A diverse board is almost always a stronger board, we truly believe, if it recruits the board member beyond the usual suspects. Has that been part of the effort for you at Valence?
Guy: Yeah, absolutely, it really is important. Again, the evolution [00:28:00] of technology and kind of the demographics of America, all of this, it’s constantly changing, and so if you’re not looking for ways to find a competitive advantage or a competitive response at a very minimum, you’re doing yourselves and your shareholders a disservice. So, as you kind of think about that, you have to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where the puck kind of is or has been, That’s how you win. That’s why Gretzky is the greatest hockey player in the history of the world is because he’d skate where the is going to be.
Joe: Whoa, wait a minute here. What about Bobby Orr? I’ve agreed on everything you said so far, and now, we’re getting into very, very troubling territory.
Guy: I’m from Pittsburgh, so I feel that my fellow Pittsburghers are not going to feel kindly that I didn’t say it was Mario Lemieux, but I recognize greatness, and again, if I could be the Gretzky of board members, I would be really, really happy.
So, again, all the boards that are looking to kind of nominate new board members, it necessitates a different approach. So, I’m not [00:29:00] suggesting that you have to have an entirely new board to represent what the future, because there is an incredible value in having the experience of someone who’s served on those public boards, but there also should be, again to your point about diversity, not just diversity of experience or diversity of skin color or culture, it’s diversity of age, it’s diversity of kind of expertise. It’s diversity of experience, and so all of those things play into understanding kind of what your board looks like.
I would say that since I took over as CEO of Valence in June of last year, I knew probably three of the people that are at the company. Again, we’re a relatively small company, so we’re fewer than 20 employees, and I knew three of the people that are working for me right now and most of the people, I didn’t know. Of the people that I did know, I’ve only met two of them face to face. So, imagine what that world looks like versus you going in in kind of one of my former organizations, EDS, and when I was at AT Kearney going into EDS and you’re wearing your white shirt and your wingtips and [00:30:00] having kind of the blue suit or the gray suit and that world looks a lot different, and yes, you need that person because they’ve been there and done that, and they’ve seen this movie before, but again, we need people that can also predict the future.
Joe: Diversity of perspective. That is what we need. Anyway, Guy, it’s been great speaking with you today. Thanks for joining us on On Boards.
Guy: My pleasure.
Joe: And thank you all for listening to On Boards with our special guest, Guy Primus. To our listeners, we have a special request. If you enjoy our podcast, please take a moment to review it and rate it on the Apple podcast app. It really helps others find and discover our podcast.
Raza: And to our listeners all of the episodes of the podcasts are also available right on our website. OnBoardsPodcast.com. That’s www.onboardspodcast.com. And you can also contact us with your comments, suggestions right there on the website as well. We hope to hear [00:31:00] from you.
Joe: Please stay safe and take care of yourselves, your families and your communities as best you can. Raza, you take care.
Raza: You, too, Joe.
Joe: Thanks.