Welcome to the Boardroom Governance Podcast. I’m your host, Evan Epstein. In this episode, I talk with Beatriz Infante, an experienced director based in Silicon Valley with a 30+ year career including CEO and leadership positions in multiple high-growth business areas, with a focus on enterprise software, software-as-a-service, and communications. She currently serves on several public and private company boards. In this podcast, we talk about the roles of CEO coaches and mentors, distinctions between serving on public and private company boards, recommendations on how to handle the current downturn, cybersecurity, the role of the board in strategy and innovation, and the evolution of ESG and boardroom diversity. *Special thanks to Lisa Spivey and Haley Huckin from the Northern California Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors for facilitating this connection with Beatriz (a member of that NACD chapter). If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can find all the show notes on the website boardroom-governance.com and please feel free to subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com
0:00 -- Intro.
1:26 -- Start of interview.
2:01 -- Beatriz' "origin story". She was born in Cuba, grew up in NY and Miami. She was part of a NSF pilot program in Miami to "raise the next generation of scientists," starting in middle school. She learned to program computers in high school, and from there she got into Princeton where she studied computer science. She then went on to Caltech to continue her CS graduate studies. Her first job after grad school was with HP. She later founded a startup called Momenta Computers ("think of it as an iPad but in the 1990s"). She transitioned to Oracle, where she reported directly to Larry Ellison and was responsible for Oracle's open systems group. Later, she joined Aspect Communications as a CEO from 1998 to 2003. How she pivoted the company during the dotcom era and 9/11. She later became CEO of three private companies which she successfully exited, and has served on corporate boards in addition to doing some business consulting.
15:33 -- The difference between CEO coaches or mentors, and serving as a corporate director. Why it's good to separate the role of Chair and CEO. On the bright line between management and governance.
22:05 -- Distinctions between serving as an independent director in public and private (venture-backed) companies. "Both are equal amount of work, it just that the work is different."
28:41 -- On the debate between staying private for longer and going public. "Too much regulation too early will kill companies." "More companies should be going public, the incentives have shifted very much to staying private and exchanging companies between private equity firms." "There is [also too much] regulatory compliance in public companies and that's become a disincentive."
31:51 -- Recommendations for directors in private venture-backed companies facing layoffs, down-rounds, recaps or fire-sales. "Cash is king." "It is possible to get yourself into a situation where the company is unsolvable."
40:25 -- On Silicon Valley's "growth at all costs" mantra. "It's only appropriate for a very small number of companies, not the other 99% of companies." The example of Amazon.
44:17 -- The role of the board in strategy and innovation.
48:34 -- On the evolution of ESG. "Environmental is a totally different topic than social, so I view [the acronym of] ESG as a failure of marketing." "It lends itself to polarization because you have put two completely unrelated things in the same bucket". On carbon emission disclosures: "Folks will start figuring out how to monetize the metrics that make it look like you're meeting your metrics but you're not actually doing that."
54:00 -- "The data for growth of cybercrime went from $3 trillion in 2015 to an expected ~$10-11 trillion in 2025."
55:29 -- How to add ESG expertise to the boardroom. Cybersecurity got added in the audit committee. Most companies have added the "S" in ESG in NomGov or Comp committees (more related to human capital management). "I would envision that 10 years from now we will not have ESG as a thing, the E and S will be separate since they don't belong in the same bucket."
1:00:28 -- On the evolution of boardroom diversity.
1:06:15 -- What are the 1-3 books that have greatly influenced your life:
1:09:18 -- Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?
1:13:53 -- Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?
1:14:35 -- An unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love: she grows roses.
1:15:31 -- The living person she most admires: currently, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ("he has backbone and he is willing to be in the lead in a dangerous and highly volatile situation but you can't get people behind you if you're hiding in the bushes and I think that is admirable.")
Beatriz Infante currently serves on several public and private company boards including 1010Data, Emulex, Ultratech, Sonus Networks, Liquidity Services (NASDAQ:LQDT), Ribbon Communications (NASDAQ:RBBN) and PriceSmart (NASDAQ:PSMT). She's also the CEO of Business Excelleration, a consulting firm founded to help the next generation of CEO’s excel and accelerate their company’s growth.
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You can follow Evan on social media at:
Twitter: @evanepstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/
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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