Today, we’d like to introduce you to Daphne Jones.
Hi Daphne, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born to Jamaican immigrants who settled in the United States for a better life. My mother instilled respect for education, work ethic, character, excellence, and hard work, even though she was under-educated herself and cleaned bedpans in hospitals for a living. She always taught me to look way above my current circumstances, as that is where the opportunity to grow and succeed must be, and I’ve taken that to heart in my life. I was then stunned when I was told by my high school counselor that I would not make it very high in my career – the highest role I would have been that of a secretary. He said I should not even consider going to college because black girls don’t make it in college. I listened to him and became a secretary, but not for long. After a few months in that role, I realized I should not be a secretary. I should have a secretary. I had to go to
college.
From there, my life’s next chapter started. I went to Illinois state university and got my bachelor’s degree in three years instead of 4 and my MBA in one year instead of two. I joined IBM as a systems engineer and was with them for about 13 years. There weren’t many people who looked like me at that time, and I had no idea that I was actually doing what is now known as “STEM”.
I got married and had a beautiful son, Jared, only to have that marital relationship end in divorce. I then set my eyes on becoming the highest-ranking leader in my field, the CIO (chief information officer)–(talk about looking way above my current circumstance!!) After working at Johnson and Johnson for several years, I became vice president of it and chief information officer for three of Johnson and Johnson’s companies. (OCD, Veridex and Therakos). In my career, I have been asked to lead enterprise-wide change programs, I have been asked to do jobs that seemed to be impossible, I have been blessed with having mentors, sponsors, and coaches who helped me navigate what can be a treacherous path to senior leadership, especially as a woman, and a
black woman to boot. On the other hand, I have been talked over in meetings, downsized, and separated from my team by my boss due to his not liking my level of influence in the organization.
I have lived half way across the country, away from my second husband for nearly 8 years, and I have been mistaken by others for someone at a much lower level than a senior vice president. But I persevered and became the highest-ranking female and person of color in a $5 billion company, reporting to the chairman of the board and CEO. From there, I knew I had one more SVP job in me before I retired, and I did that role at GE healthcare in Milwaukee. I have since retired, written a book (Win When They Say You Won’t) , founded my company–The Board Curators– and started serving on three paying (NYSE)public company boards.
My deepest satisfaction comes from helping others reach success earlier, higher, and more impactfully than I did. I target my work to those senior leaders who are overlooked, underserved, undervalued, and just may need a role model or a guiding hand. I was overlooked, undervalued, and underserved, and my mission is to teach them wisdom so they can make it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I would say there have been good times and bad. Some smooth, some rough. But no matter what I went through, I learned to take it all as a learning experience and sought to not take feedback or consequences personally but as data or information to inform me how to or how not to do something in the future.
As an example, I spent my early career at IBM as a systems engineer. After various roles at the company, I finally got the ‘nod’ and was sponsored for first-level management by my branch manager in Houston, TX. He believed in me and gave me a significant promotion to enable me to become a manager. I was doing well for several years, moving from Houston to Dallas and then to
Washington, DC, after which I moved to Atlanta without the sponsorship or continued connection with my IBM sponsor. I didn’t nurture Atlanta business relationships as I should have, didn’t have anyone in my corner, and didn’t keep my ear to the ground-I ended up getting laid off/downsized, and this happened around the same time as the divorce from my first husband was underway. It was a horrible time in my life, and I felt like a failure – although I don’t practice this thinking now, I thought I was worthless at the time. I took that feedback (of being downsized) very personally.
I didn’t know at the time if there was something I should have done to prepare for or mitigate the likelihood of being downsized. I ended up divorced, moved my son to New Jersey, and began a new role with the NJ electric & gas utility, PSE&G. I recall that I had to wait many years after leaving PSE&G and then joining J&J before I could get the coveted VP role. I always seemed to be too broad or too narrow in my skills, too global or too local in my geographic experience, too tough or too nice in my demeanor with others – everything except just right. As a woman, it seemed that many roadblocks were erected that prevented me from advancing to the next level. I discovered that it was not just my performance. It was also my image and exposure that I had to ensure was in line with what was required to win my VP title.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer right in the middle of my writing my book, win when they say you won’t. I had to make decisions about whether I would go forward with the book or give it up and focus only on my health. I realized I could do both and that challenges are not insurmountable. My need to teach wisdom to those who need it could be done while I was taking care of my health. My book gave me courage, the will to win, and the fortitude to withstand all the clinical interventions I had to go through. It made me realize that although we cannot always control what happens to us, we can control how we respond, and it is with our minds that we really can win. I interviewed publishers in between surgeries, selected a ghostwriter, and kept going through and trusting the process. I’m blessed that as one hurtful thing got removed from me, one new helpful tool was brought into the world.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We formed the board of curators just a few years ago, in the middle of covid. The catalyst for starting it was that I had joined my first ‘for profit’ board, but I didn’t exactly know how I did it, nor did there seem to be an existing process that I could follow to do it again. I wanted to be on more than 1 board. Board service is shrouded with mystery, and as I would speak to executives and friends, the opportunity appeared to only be available to people who knew the right people or to those people of a specific gender, ethnicity, or pedigree. It is the CEO and CFO types that most commonly serve on public company/private company boards and are the most sought out and discovered by boards looking for their skill.
Our company brings light and clarity to a historically opaque process, and we aim to demystify the path to board service, democratizing the information and the process and curating the readiness for senior executives that are not normally or traditionally sought out. We help answer, in the moment of coaching and training, the questions many senior leaders, especially women and people of color, have been asking for years. “What do corporate boards actually do?” “What does it mean to be board-ready?” “What does it take for me to be board-ready?”
What sets us apart is:
1) we are comprised of experienced board members, each with a long history of global CXO experience stemming from diverse industries and functions, and who currently serve on public and private, small and large-cap company boards and mutual funds. The backgrounds of the team are diverse:
A)function – former CEOs, CIOA, CLOSs, CFOs, etc.
B) industry- chemicals, manufacturing, consulting, finance, technology, healthcare, insurance.
C) gender/race – male, female, black, white.
2) our concierges must be on multi-billion-dollar company boards, be members of NACD (National Association of Corporate Directors) – where they continually learn so they can continually teach, and go through training on our concierge process that ensures consistency of approach and quality.
3) we meet our clients where they are- whether or not the client is familiar with board service.
We don’t only teach about the role of board members as some of the courses out there do. We also teach & coach our clients about the systematic steps to take to determine their board interests, become discoverable, interview due diligence, and more-all focused on helping them be curated to become a value-added board member on day 1. Our company is needed in the market because the rate of board transformation, in terms of skills, age, expertise, and diversity of experience, is not keeping pace with the rate of change & transformation in businesses.
Businesses are dealing with diverse & simultaneous changes in their industries -from supply chain disruption, geopolitical conflicts, activist investors, and M&A to digital transformation, cyber security threats, regulatory expectations, quiet quitting in their human capital management, customer loyalty, inflation & the cost of capital to name a lot! We help provide board-ready leaders who can help the boards with those challenging economic and industry dynamics that are impacting many companies around the world.
The same traditional individuals who have had access to & knowledge of the board of directors (CEO/CFO) are necessary-but they alone are not sufficient. The nontraditional roles such as CIO/Chief Digital Officer, CHRO, CMO, Chief manufacturing/supply chain, etc.
And the value of diversity of race & gender has been overlooked and undervalued when being considered for board service. Our role is to help those leaders who are not normally in the board room understand the “what, why, and how ” of boards so they can be ready for & nail the interview and then get to work as successful board members. They will be able to help the board navigate those diverse & challenging disruptions in their industry. We provide :
1) one-on-one coaching for 6 months
2) web-based online training (self-paced)
3) we custom-create classes for clients to fill gaps they are focused on
4) we offer our board curators live! Class for groups of 20 or more.
Whether you are a senior-level individual, a not-for-profit organization, or a for-profit corporation that wants to help develop its leaders in a profound and important way, we are the go-to organization for that. We are most proud that one of our clients is a $2 trillion dollar company and has been our client for 3 years. We curate leaders to be board-ready.
What changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
If I look at where trends are, here is what I’m seeing based on data from firms like Deloitte or Heidrick & struggles: The 8th edition of the Deloitte study on diversity & women in the board room reports that women hold less than one-quarter of the world’s board seats (23.3% in 2023). There have been efforts to drive gender parity: since 2022, the number of women on boards globally has risen by 3.6%, and the timeline toward achieving parity has dropped by seven years. But even with the efforts in the world to increase the number of women serving on boards, progress isn’t happening quickly enough. If this rate of change were to hold steady, it is unlikely that gender parity on boards would be reached before 2038-and possibly later. And we are not able to see
a clear path to gender parity in the board chair role. In the us alone, Heidrick & struggles shows that the trend is declining. In
2023, the percentage of new board seats in fortune 500 firms filled by women dropped from 45% to 40%, while seats for racial or ethnic minorities decreased from 41% to 34%. (It was 41% in 2021). In 2022, 414 appointments went to diverse professionals vs. 449 in 2021. There is a resurgence in the number of ex-CEOs and ex-CFOs taking up board positions. Where I see the ‘board’ industry going is that it will waffle a bit between traditional candidates and non-traditional ones. The data consistently shows
that diverse boards (race/gender/ethnic/skills/
Contact Info:
. Website: www.theboardcurators.com
. Instagram: @daphnejonesofficial
. Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/daphne-e-jones
. Other: www.daphneejones.com
