“We remain a blind spot for corporate America,” said Esther Aguilera, chief executive of the Latino Corporate Directors Assn., an advocacy group founded in 2013. “The narrative has been, ‘We can’t find qualified Latinos.’ But there’s ample talent.”
A slide showed what she called “the stark reality” of S&P 500 boards: Black directors at 11%, Asian directors at 6% and Latino directors at 5% in 2022.
Companies, she said later, promote people based on “perceptions of who’s worthy … and Latinos are at the bottom of the barrel. Yet Latino talent is right under their nose.”
“We don’t want anybody to be under-engaged, whether they’re African American or Asian American or Anglo American. But we do want to see Latino and Latina Americans at par,” said Solomon Trujillo, a former chief executive of telecommunications firm U.S. West who joined Western Union’s board in 2012.
Latino leaders say their corporate struggles are in part related to a dearth of positive portrayals in movies and television along with the media’s intense focus on illegal immigration, leading to negative stereotyping.
But recently a Latina financier who manages client assets of $2 billion told Aguilera that she has attended business meetings where “someone will tell her, ‘Oh, can you clean the table?’ That’s people’s perceptions,” Aguilera said.
Holden calls the law “a toe in the water. If you pick one director from any one of these underrepresented groups, you’re in compliance,” he said. “But the numbers show a gross under-representation for Hispanics. Companies must find ways of recruiting [and] maybe add more positions to their boards.”
Corporations on the Nasdaq stock exchange must publicly disclose their board demographics. They must have at least one female director or one “underrepresented minority” or LGBTQ+ director by the end of this year, and, for larger boards, two by the end of 2025. Or they must explain why they don’t.
But companies can satisfy the rule without appointing any Latinos — and many have done so. They “clump” diverse directors together, Trujillo said. “A minority is a minority is a minority, right?”
“Institutional investors are powerful,” Aguilera said. “They want different perspectives in the boardroom. They’ve been writing letters for women. I said, ‘Why aren’t you writing letters for Latinos?’ And they said, ‘Give us the data.’”
The collaborative’s GDP report makes an economic case: From 2010 to 2020, Latinos accounted for more than half of U.S. population growth and their consumption grew more than three times faster than that of non-Latinos.
“The saying is, if you’re not in the boardroom, you’re on the menu, right?” Aguilera said. “Well, Latinos, we’re not even on the menu. We’re not in the room. We’re not even in the darn elevator.”
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