Coco Brown: Founder & CEO of Athena Alliance on Board Opportunities and Governance.

May 28, 2024

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(0:00) Intro.

(1:14) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(2:02) Start of interview.

(2:37) Coco's "origin story."

(4:32) Her professional background with HR, comp and IT.

(6:32) Her time at Taos, a professional services business in IT consulting (17yrs). Ultimately acquired by IBM in 2021.

(8:35) The origin story of her founding Athena Alliance (2016) as a non-profit.

(11:00) Three core issues with board placements: 1) access to opportunities, 2) positioning for the role, and 3) how to compete to win. *They have placed ~500 women to boards.

(13:52) On the business model of Athena Alliance.

(16:50) On transitioning from a non-profit to a for-profit model.

(20:56) Distinguishing board service between companies with different capital structures (ie. public, PE, VC, ESOPs, etc).

(22:18) The landscape for independent director board opportunities (~30,000 companies). On ESOP companies and closed corporations and/or family businesses.

(28:18) On Athena's Board Readiness Course.

(32:20) On in-person vs remote work, both on an executive and board level. "How do you scale intimacy?"

(36:14) On the impact of AI in the boardroom.

(39:48) Books that have greatly influenced her life:

The Popcorn Report, by Faith Popcorn (1991)
The Science of Evil, by Simon Baron-Cohen (2011)

(43:05) Her mentors. "Different people for different things" e.g. Ivonne Wassenar and Scott Maxwell.

(44:20) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by.

(44:41) An unusual habit or absurd thing that she loves.

(45:12) The living person she most admires. Toni Townes-Whitley (CEO of SAIC)

Coco Brown is the Founder and CEO of Athena Alliance, a company helping to position top 10% of executive women for advancement and board opportunities.

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