Amazon names Starbucks COO as second black woman director on its all-white board
Starbucks chief operating officer and former Sam’s Club CEO Rosalind
“Roz” Brewer has been appointed to the Amazon board as the second black
woman director of the company after Myrtle Potter, the former president
and COO of Genentech who served from 2004 to 2009.
The Seattle tech giant confirmed Brewer’s appointment on Monday
stating that she’s also been appointed to the board’s leadership
development and compensation committee. This makes Brewer the only
person of color serving on Amazon’s 10-person board.
This decision follows the company’s plan
to diversify its all-white board and consider minority candidates after
they faced employee backlash and public criticism from black and
Hispanic members of Congress.
She is “a perfect example of the extraordinary minority and female
talent that exists in corporate America, that is all too often excluded
from the boardroom and the C-Suite,” said
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, co-chair of the House Tech Accountability Caucus
and a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which pushed
for Amazon to diversify its board last year.
Brewer’s appointment “serves as an example to other industry leaders
regarding the positive economic, business, innovation and inclusion
benefits offered by increasing board diversity, especially to companies
leading the way in our modern innovation economy,” Kelly added.
Rosalind Brewer, who was named in Forbes’ most powerful women in
business list for 2018, has many firsts to her name. She is the first
African American and the first woman to lead a Walmart division. She is
also the first woman and first black chief operating officer at
Starbucks.
Brewer spent 22 years at Kimberly-Clark and had served on the boards
of Lockheed Martin and Molson Coors Brewing Company before joining
Walmart in 2006 as a regional vice president. She became the CEO of
Walmart’s Sam’s Club from 2012 to 2017. She became a director at
Starbucks and the company’s COO in October 2017.
Ranked No. 33 on Fortune’s list of the world’s most powerful women,
Brewer will get 570 shares of common stock as part of her election to
the Amazon board that will vest in three equal annual instalments
beginning February 15, 2020.
The 10-member board is currently made up of six men and four women
including CEO Jeff Bezos; Tom Alberg; Jamie Gorelick; Daniel
Huttenlocher; Judith McGrath; Jonathan Rubinstein; Thomas Ryder;
Patricia Stonesifer; and Wendell Weeks.
Rosalind Brewer is a Detroit native and attended Cass Technical High
School in Detroit. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry
from Spelman College, Atlanta.
She later graduated from the Director’s College at the University of
Chicago Booth School of Business/ Stanford Law School and completed an
advanced management program at The Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania.
She is married to John Brewer and they have two children.
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