Firm Stakeholder Metrics
As we consider ourselves and the companies we invest in, progress across Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (EID) can sometimes appear frustratingly slow. Yet, we must be mindful that material change does not happen overnight and that our efforts today will greatly impact tomorrow. Accountability and measurement will help ensure that our momentum persists toward meaningful progress over time. Our sustainability-linked corporate revolving credit facility ties our borrowing cost to our performance against these key ESG metrics, demonstrating our commitment to leading change in our industry. Two particular areas of focus have been board diversity and disclosure of diversity-related metrics. We have engaged with many companies on both fronts but, importantly, have also held ourselves accountable.
In September, we welcomed Michele Docharty to our seven-member board as the fourth independent director, alongside Sharon Bowen, Steven Kandarian and Richard Worley. Since 2019, we have increased the gender and racial/ethnic diversity of our board to approximately 29%. Michele most recently served as Americas Head of Execution Services and Global Co-Head of Synthetic Product Distribution at Goldman Sachs, where she spent more than 30 years, including the last 10 as a partner. Throughout her career, Michele has been a consistent and active proponent of diversity and inclusion, serving on Goldman Sachs’ Americas Inclusion and Diversity Committee and as a senior member of its Hispanic/ Latinx Network. She will be a key driver of our continuing commitment to EID and has already engaged with our newest employee resource group, the NB Hispanic and Latinx Network.
Regarding disclosure, we are committed to sharing more detailed diversity statistics. This includes ethic/racial diversity for U.S. employees and gender diversity for our global employee base, looking at broader statistics and breakdown by corporate title. These metrics were first shared with employees in June 2021 and will be publicly available on our external website in 2Q 2022 (and updated monthly after that). As shown in the following pages, we have made progress on gender and ethic/racial diversity since 2018, but still have much work to do. Transparency remains at the forefront of our EID efforts. We will continue to report relevant metrics regarding our employees, client portfolios, environmental impact and community engagement in our ESG Annual Report.
62 2021 ESG ANNUAL REPORT
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