11 minute read
Jose Suquet
"THAT IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, IN THE NONPROFIT WORLD”
During his four decades in the insurance industry, José Suquet has found that networking and friendship building can open doors to membership in company boards and one of best keys is a leadership role with a prominent nonprofit organization.
SUQUET IS currently chief executive officer, president and chairman of the board for New Orleans-based Pan-American Life Insurance Group, a company he joined in 2004, and also serves on the boards of Regions Financial Corporation and Ochsner Health System.
Suquet, who was born in Cuba, shared his perspective how board candidates, especially Hispanics who are underrepresented in governance roles, can build opportunities, He also discussed the importance of vetting board offers and how profoundly different a board seat is from the management suite.
For a start, Suquet suggests that board aspirants look at a nonprofit, become involved in its inner workings, such as through its committees, and use this relationship as a platform to expand a network of professional acquaintances. He is convinced his two-term membership with Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, New Orleans Branch, lead to a board seat. "I was probably the most junior member of that board," he said, "We had people running Delta Airlines, Home Depot and Suntrust Bank.” One of his acquaintances was the CEO of Regions Financial, one of the largest bank holding companies. While Suquet was with the Fed Reserve he couldn't serve on a bank board, but the Region's CEO knew the insurance executive's term was ending – term limits apply – and spoke to him about an opportunity to join his board. Suquet accepted the invitation and joined the Regions Financial board in 2017. He would chair the audit committee which he said, "in itself is an undertaking role." "One of the best pieces of advice I got was just to ask is have you ever had a claim on your directors’ and officers’ coverage," he said. "It is a very openended question and a couple of other potential boards I was looking at had claims and one of them went to the extreme of saying, 'well, we will have to need you to sign a non-disclosure agreement if we gave you that answer'" Suquet said. "To me that was I huge red flag," he said. "I don't want anything to do with coming into that type of situation.
For Suquet, there is a basic difference between being a high-level company executive and serving on a company board where a broad, forward governance is essential. "As CEO of a company he is involved in the day-day-to day issues, but as a board member you are dealing primarily with the CEO and you are getting exposure to the top management of the company and are there to support the CEO on strategy and implementation of the strategy."
A board of directors, as a body, needs to understand a company's strategic planning process, Suquet said, and to question a strategy when it does not appear right and supporting when it does, with periodic checks on its implementation.
Directors also need to assist the company in succession planning. As the CEO is getting ready to retire, the board should be very much intimately involved in the choosing of the new CEO," he said. Two years after Suquet joined the Regions board, that chairman, who had invited him to take a seat, decided he was ready to retirement. "So, we conducted a very extensive internal and external search and we landed one of the top internal candidates.”
While company directors focus on such priorities like ESG and diversity, they also are being compelled to pay more attention to information security and talent management and the succession planning in the "new world of remote work." Cyber-attacks represent a big threat to the economy and companies, he said, alluding to the high-profile attacks on the pipeline and on a major meat processing company, this situation has meant that companies and their boards, he said, are spending quite a bit of time on the related issues of recovery, remediation and resilience – how an attacked company recover and how long will it take to get back up to speed.
Another issue that companies need to address is the impact of the increased prevalence of remote work in the pandemic on their culture."Part of the advantages of working together are the collaboration, the mentoring and the learning that takes place and that I was fortunate to have in my entire career," that is a very relevant topic to analyze now.
LOUIS MIRAMONTES
Since he retired as a partner in the San Francisco office of the KPMG, he has been appointed to several boards, including two Fortune 500 companies, Rite Aid and Lithia Motors.
At the same time, he understands his accomplishments are not the norm for most Latinos. In fact, there is a lower proportion of Latinos in corporate governance compared to their share of the population and growing presence in the talent pool for these seats. "The number of Latinos coming across is not as many as I would expect and that it will take time and focused efforts to change this."
Miramontes said, "I want to grow the opportunity that I have had so other Latinos and other diverse individuals will have opportunity and so those who are not aware of our community, those who have doubts about our numbers and our capabilities, can see examples."
Similarly, Miramontes says he feels privileged to serve as a good example and a role model to Latinos who are starting on the path toward a role in company governance. "I want to be an effective, outstanding board member, so the average is not acceptable to me," he said. "We are in the board room, we are good and talented, but let's not be comfortable with that," said Miramontes, who has become a leader director and a committee chairman.
Miramontes said one of his strengths is that he is a good team player. "It is not about me, it is about organization," he said. He can see at least two benefits that diversity can provide to a company and its board of directors. One is understanding the markets a company is going to serve. "And if they want to address the Latino community, I know something about that," he said. The second is that Latinos can help a board develop a balance view of issues. "We are going to tell you our thoughts, offer suggestions and challenges and we will do it tactfully, and with our own style."
The path that Miramontes took to become a director for some major companies ran through four decades with KMPG as a CPA and was broadened by his rapport with clients, especially their top management. From becoming a partner with the firm in 1986, he continued to work with clients but also had contact with their directors. "I learned about the dynamics of board roles and conduct and came to understand how good ones work," he said. Miramontes personal goal became to gain seats on corporate boards after he retired from KPMG and he made sure his clients were aware of this.
Actually, he recognized that he was not going to get an invitation just because he "is smart and a Latino." He says, "That is OK but you have to express views, be proactive, share your personal goals."
Among the changes that Miramontes has observed in the corporate world is that among shareholders there is a lot of movement on ESGs and that companies have strategies about environmental, social topics, governance topics. "What boards are learning is that they need members who understand the social aspects, the diversity of our employees, the opportunity for employee training, their treatment," he said, adding, "I am well-schooled in all that." In addition, he says the employee experience is changing and companies will need to deal with a new normal, remote learning. He said it may take a few years.
Another challenge that he sees confronting boards of directors relates to changes in customer engagement with digital interaction becoming more mainstream. "Customer engagement has to be connected with a very thoughtful and aggressive digital strategy to reach customers online, or if they want to come to the physical store, online purchasing or paying," he said.
Miramontes sees those Latinos who make it to senior management and on to company boards as representing their heritage and providing a good example of what they can contribute. "So that the board, the leadership are saying that we are not only making money from you Latinos, but we are bringing you into to be leaders," he said. Part of the problem is that Latinos need to do a better job of promoting themselves, Miramontes said. "Our culture is very inner we don't brag about ourselves, we don't boast about ourselves, we let the work do the talking." he said. "It is disappointing that we are not gaining as fast we want to or should or we deserve to," he said, "but it will come in the next three to five years there will be more opportunities for Latinos due to a lot of board turnover.”
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GUILLERMO “GIL” MARMOL
The historic role of a corporate board of directors, essentially to work with management in ensuring that a company remains on the right track, is unlikely to change, but in the new digital world the demands of governance are rapidly evolving, especially in the areas of diversity and skill sets.
This perspective is among the insights that Guillermo "Gil" Marmol has gleaned from his decades of work as a consultant and participant in digital transformation process and his membership on company boards. Since 2011 Marmol has served as a director for Foot Locker and also has lead his own investment and advisory services firm, Marmol & Associates since 2000. He also has served on other boards and was an independent director for Vitamin Shoppe from 2016 until 2019, when the company was acquired by what is the Franchise Group.
During his career, Marmol has found that that experience and vision remain valuable in corporate governance, but there is a whole array of new expectations that include diversity and as exemplified by Europe, expectations related to climate. "If you not speaking to those very directly and very credibly, you are going to have some problems," he advises. Other emerging priorities include being responsive to ESG (Environmental Social Governance) and ensuring that among the next class of CEOs and board members, "is that there is the appropriate depth and the appropriate addition of capabilities that are now required. In dealing with ESG, he said, there is a lot of pressure on boards from the investors, to ensure that the governance of the company, the development of the company is in concert with the expectations.
Another consideration for any board, Marmol said, especially in the retail sector where Footlocker is a major player, "is how the company is fully engaging with its customer base. Understanding that customer base in a very profound way and building the capability to serve that customer base in a very exacting way." For him, the path that took him to public boards started at McKinsey & Company, where he was an executive for 17 years. This was a great training ground, he said, because he worked with senior executives on issues of organization, direction, performance improvement, concerns that fall among the responsibilities of a senior leadership team and company board. "As a senior partner I had the option of permanent career of consulting, he said, "but I chose to move on."
Subsequently, Marmol spent a decade in technology services sector at Perot Systems then at Electronic Data Systems Corporation, thanks to an invitation of a former client and was executive during the company's massive turnaround. "EDS went from losing a half billion dollars the year I arrived (2003) to making a billion dollars the year I left (2007). Meanwhile, Marmol decided to "take a ride on the Internet wave" and during the "dot-com crash created his own professional services firm in 2000 by bringing together a series of smaller firms that did consulting in the Internet space. "I took the company public, and had my first experience with a board, which was not a normal experience because I was a CEO," he said. Still, he had the "fascinating experience of observing other board directors and how they played their role. "Since then I have been doing board work, some public, some private, and investing in early stage companies with the hope that one of them will grow up and do exceptionally well," he said.
Getting that first invitation to a corporate board is "by far the hardest" and "not an easy road to follow," However, in the case of Foot Locker, Marmol had a personal relationship in his favor. Ken Hicks, who had worked for him at McKinsey, who had just become chairman and CEO in 2009. "So we talked about his new role and I expressed my interest, he expressed his interest, and not before long I was on the board," Marmol said. "I bought several things to the party that were valuable to them," he said, "I had a decade of experience in technology service, I had worked closely with major organizations involved in technology transformations which is now is now called the digital journey."
Moreover, he said, "I also could also bring a perspective of corporate strategy that was not fully represented on the board."
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