Corporate boards seeing increases in women and minorities: Analyst

Egon Zehnder’s Diversity and Inclusion Practice leader Cynthia Soledad joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss a report on corporate DEI initiatives.

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AKIKO FUJITA: Well, the recent declines we've seen in tech are starting to take an expensive toll on SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. The Financial Times reports Son is on the hook for nearly $5 billion as a result of growing losses for the company's tech investments. That's according to recent filings they found. The FT further reports that the value of Son's stake in SoftBank's Vision Fund was almost entirely wiped out by the end of September amid the tech selloff.

Now in recent weeks, we have seen those impacted by the losses in big tech, namely in the form of job cuts and hiring freezes. So what will the impact be to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within the company in the tech sector?

Let's bring in Cynthia Soledad. She is lead-- she leads Egon Zehnder's diversity and inclusion practice. You've put out this report that points to some progress on DEI. 25% of global corporate board committee leaders are now women. So things are moving in the right direction. But how much of these cuts, do you think, derail that, especially given that a lot of these announcements have come from the HR department?

CYNTHIA SOLEDAD: I think the exciting thing about the progress that we're seeing-- what you named is at the board level, there's been incredible progress in diversity of representation. So we are seeing increases in representation of women. We are seeing increases in underrepresented ethnic and racial minorities. So we know that boards are engaged in this topic. And our hope would be that because boards are engaged in this topic, that the DEI agenda at the corporate level continues to be a key priority.

But obviously, there's a lot of concern if we see disinvestment occurring in culture and in representation at the company level, but again, I think I feel really heartened by-- we feel really heartened by the progress and the engagement by the boards in this topic.

AKIKO FUJITA: When you look at the cuts so far, whether it is at Amazon, Meta, and Twitter, you can almost say Twitter is kind of a different issue here. But to what extent have those cuts come from that very part that you said is really key to moving the needle on DEI?

CYNTHIA SOLEDAD: Yeah, all of these organizations have had really wonderful teams that have been focusing specifically on DEI as a part of the broader culture and talent agenda. And we've seen both the HR function and DEI be affected by these recent cuts. I do think that there are opportunities for DEI work to continue in different structures and stay embedded and intertwined in-- and actually, that's a beautiful vision that DEI work is embedded in all of the work that the business does.

While there have been impacts to HR function and DEI function, there will be an HR function that lives in these organizations. There are business functions that still need to embrace methods of increasing diversity and inclusion in the organizations for them to deal with the complex challenges that these companies face. So my hope would be that while there are hits that, again, there are ways in which the DEI work can be structured inside the organization to continue progress.

AKIKO FUJITA: Cynthia, really appreciate your time today. Fascinating report out there and certainly points to where things stand, especially in the tech sector. Appreciate your time.