Maureen Helmer, Plug Power board member and partner at Barclay Damon, was interviewed for the Albany Times Union article “A Push to Diversify Boards” regarding the Nasdaq Stock Market’s proposed diversity objective for all public companies trading on its US market. The proposal, which has not yet been approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, would require all public companies listed on Nasdaq’s market to disclose race, gender, and LGBTQ status of their board members. It would also require most companies to make sure one of their board members is a woman and one is from a racial minority or from the LGBTQ+ community.
Many people, including Maureen, support the proposal as an effort to increase diversity. She said, “When you have a whole bunch of people in the room with a lot of similarities, they tend to become an echo chamber. Every time you add a new element to it I think your decisions are made richer by that.”
“I have a hard time envisioning what would be a rationale not to have those [diverse] individuals,” Maureen explains, regarding companies’ ability to opt out of disclosing their diversity statistics at the board level by providing an explanation.
This is a step in the right direction for Nasdaq. Maureen said, “Hopefully we will get to the point someday where boards are so diverse that someone doesn’t have to wag their finger to say go out and get your diverse background.”