Boardroom Governance with Evan Epstein

Karen Francis: "An Effective Lead Director Needs to Have Excellent EQ (Emotional Quotient)."

May 1, 2023

01:01:27

0:00 -- Intro.

2:00 -- Start of interview.

2:28 -- Karen's "origin story".

3:24 -- Her management career at Procter & Gamble, Bain & Co (focusing on property and casualty insurance), Berol, GM, ICG and Ford (where she led the Corporate Venture Capital Group).

11:12 -- Her transition to SF/Bay Area and tech as CEO of Publicis & Hal Riney and AcademixDirect.

13:23 -- Distinctions between operating in startups and public companies.

14:20 -- On her board journey:

Past board positions: portfolio companies from Ford's Corporate Venture Capital Group, Hanover Insurance (NYSE), AutoNation (NYSE), Circle Graphics, Telenav (ex Nasdaq), Dynamic Signal, and Renivent TechPartners Y (SPAC on Nasdaq).
Current Board positions: Nauto, Metawave, Wind River, TPG Global (*Sr Advisor), CelLink (Chair), Vontier (Chair)(NYSE) and Polestar (Nasdaq).

16:57 -- On distinctions between PE-backed and VC-backed company boards (and the role of independent directors in each).

21:00 -- On serving as a director of a SPAC company (and distinctions between SPAC companies and the resulting public company from de-SPAC transactions. She's served on both capacities: with Reid Hoffman's Renivent TechPartners Y and Polestar (joining after it went public via a de-SPAC transaction).

24:34 -- On serving in international company boards.

30:50 -- The challenges and opportunities of the automotive industry's transition to EV. The impact of Tesla and Government incentives.

36:02 -- On the role of Chair and/or lead independent directors. "Fundamentally, the Chair or Lead Independent Director is the CEO's Person."

39:19 -- On the separation of the Chair and CEO roles.

41:47 -- Her advice on board evaluations.

45:50-- Her take on ESG and the anti-ESG backlash. "The #1 target audience for this work is the employee base." "In today's world, talent is one of the most important and scarce assets that a company has, and any shareholder should care if the company is retaining talent."

51:49 -- The books that have greatly influenced her life:

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy (1987)
Her Economics and French books in college.

52:57 -- Her mentors, and what she learned from them.

John Smale, former CEO of P&G and Chair of GM.
Shelly Zimbler, former head of sales at P&G.

53:56 -- Quotes she thinks of often or lives his life by: "Life is short."

54:58 -- An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves: wine making. She owns a winery, Limerick Lane Cellars, in Healdsburg, California.

56:42 -- On the impact of the collapse of SVB in the wine and tech industry.

59:39 -- The living person she most admires: Oprah Winfrey.

Karen C. Francis is a Silicon Valley based corporate director with a strong track record of successfully building companies and businesses across multiple industries. Karen has deep domain knowledge in the automotive and advertising sectors and has embraced the opportunities that technology disruption is creating globally.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

Twitter: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License