Boardroom Governance with Evan Epstein

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

Episode Summary

Welcome to the Boardroom Governance Podcast. I’m your host, Evan Epstein. In this episode, I talk with Karen Francis DeGolia, a Silicon Valley-based corporate director with deep domain knowledge in the automotive and advertising sectors. Karen currently serves as Chair of both Vontier, focused on mobility and transportation businesses, and CelLink, a leading manufacturer of High-conductance, large-area flexible circuits for automotive applications. She is deeply engaged in the mobility and transportation technology ecosystem as an independent director for Polestar, the electric vehicle brand spun off from Volvo, plus a number of private-equity and venture-capital funded companies in Silicon Valley. In this podcast, we talk about her career including her board journey in public, private, advisory, non-profit, and international company boards. We address trends from the automotive industry, SPACs, the separation of Chair and CEO roles, and the positive and negative connotations of ESG. We also talk about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its impact in tech and the wine industry. Karen knows the latter sector well since she owns Limerick Lane Cellars, a winery located in Healdsburg, California. 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

Episode Notes

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:

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: 

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

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

  1. John Smale, former CEO of P&G and Chair of GM.
  2. 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.

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 You can follow Evan on social media at:

Twitter: @evanepstein

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

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

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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