THE INNOVATORS
ADVERTISEMENT
Digitizing and Strengthening Board Governance with Diligent
Diligent's Boards platform, accessed from an iPad.
B
oard governance is a challenge for organizations large and small, including irrigation districts and other organizations in the water industry. Organizing board meetings, preparing materials, keeping participants updated, and carrying out votes can amount to a formidable task—and can create plenty of paperwork. Diligent is one company working to make that task easier, more efficient, and more secure. Its Boards portal allows organizations large and small to prepare and distribute materials to their boards of directors, update those materials on a real-time basis, and carry out meetings with increased efficiency. In this interview, Trevor Vale, director of global sales at Diligent, speaks with Municipal Water Leader Editor-InChief Kris Polly about what Diligent is bringing to conference and boardroom tables and how it can help irrigation districts across the country. Kris Polly: Please tell us about your background and how long you’ve been with the company.
34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
Kris Polly: Where are you from originally? Trevor Vale: I was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, and moved to New York City in 2000, where I’ve been ever since. I went to the University of Waterloo, where I got an honors degree in political science. Kris Polly: Tell us tell about Diligent and its history. Trevor Vale: Diligent was founded in the early days of 2000 and was formally created in 2001. At the time, it was focused on building secure intranet web portals, which were all the rage back then, and meeting the market demand for web development and creation. It was through that business model that Diligent came to work with the large asset-management firm SunAmerica and took its first steps into the governance space. Diligent was tasked with creating a secure intranet portal for use by SunAmerica’s board of directors. The company asked us to reduce the amount of paper they had to produce for their quarterly board meetings. Diligent’s solution was built around digitizing that paperwork and presenting it through a secure intranet portal environment. We needed something robust enough to meet SunAmerica’s complex
PHOTO COURTESY OF DILIGENT.
Trevor Vale: I have been with Diligent since July 2016, and I currently head up the global sales group. I have 25 years of sales experience within the financial services vertical, and spent most of my career selling either at large multinationals like Reuters, where I spent 10 years, or at smaller, midsized startups, companies like CarryQuote or Xignite. Prior to starting at Diligent, I
managed a sales team at the Intercontinental Exchange, the owners of the New York Stock Exchange.
