More women and people of color on university and hospital boards, report says, but few chair them

In 2019, a local nonprofit and university-based center released a report on the lack of women on university and hospital boards in the Philadelphia region.

Three years later, there has been marked improvement in both female representation, as well as in people of color, which a new report by the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University and the Women’s Nonprofit Leadership Initiative examined more fully this time.

But the majority of higher education and health-care boards are still chaired by white males and many boards don’t reflect the makeup of their staffs, students, patients, and local communities, according to the new report, “Closing the Gaps: Gender and Race in Nonprofit Boardrooms.”

» READ MORE: Female board members outnumbered by men at Philly’s colleges and hospitals, new study finds

“We urged the eds and meds to narrow the gender gap by setting an initial goal of at least 30% women trustees,” Carolyn Adams, co-chair of the initiative and former dean of Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts, said in a statement. “We now call on these institutions to close the gender and racial gaps within the next three years, so they have boards that are representative of the gender and racial diversity of our region’s population. We also call on stakeholders to use their collective power and influence to encourage both disclosure of board demographics and intentional action to foster board diversity.”

The 30% benchmark had a precedent: The Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2017 passed a resolution encouraging for-profit and nonprofit boards to reach a minimum of one-third women by 2020.

The groups’ findings will be presented at Founder’s Hall at La Salle University at 5 p.m. Tuesday. The report is among the latest to call attention to the need for more gender and racial diversity on boards, the seats of power at local institutions. Only one woman serves as CEO out of 100 of the region’s top public companies, according to a report released last week by the Forum of Executive Women, though there was progress in female membership among executives and on boards.

» READ MORE: Philly ‘eds and meds’ boards slowly bringing on more women

In the latest report, the groups are calling on the education and health-care boards to reach at least 50% female membership and 20% women of color and 20% men of color.

The groups looked at 46 universities and hospital boards in the Philadelphia region, with big hitters such as the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Thomas Jefferson, and Temple. Nearly three-quarters supplied data to the report’s authors or confirmed data. For the 13 that did not — Arcadia University, Christiana Care, Doylestown Hospital, Haverford College, Inspira Health Network, Main Line Health, Nemours Children’s Health, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Princeton, Redeemer Health, Thomas Jefferson University, Trinity Health, and the University of Delaware — researchers’ used their own data.

The findings include:

But the report also noted that less than one-quarter of the boards are chaired by women, and only one, Gwynedd Mercy University, has a woman of color. And only two boards are chaired by men of color, one of them at Lincoln, a historically Black university.

Three hospital boards — those that operate Doylestown Hospital, Shriner’s Hospital for Children, and Tower Health — had no men or women of color as of June 1. Tower has since added one woman of color, Adams said.

And seven health-care boards have not even met the minimum goal of 30% of women on their boards. They include: Shriners Children’s Hospital, Capital Health, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Temple, Grand View Health, and University of Pennsylvania. Ten educational boards failed to meet that threshold. They are: Wilmington University, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Eastern University, Temple, La Salle, Drexel, Villanova, Penn, Widener, and Delaware Valley University. (Three are listed as both health-care and higher education boards.)

Kara Wentworth, executive director of La Salle’s nonprofit center, noted that La Salle for the first time in its history has a female chair of the board of trustees, Ellen E. Reilly, a La Salle graduate who is head of health-care and life sciences at WHOOP, a Boston-based company that monitors fitness through wearable technology. But she wasn’t included in La Salle’s numbers because she didn’t get the position until July 1 after the study had closed.

In an introduction to the report, Reilly noted that women have held other leadership positions on La Salle’s board, but acknowledged La Salle and others have more work to do.

“Equal representation around our leadership tables is essential,” she said. We cannot lead, educate, and support an increasingly diverse community without diverse leadership.”

Wentworth said she’s encouraged that nearly three quarters of colleges and health enterprises responded to the groups’ queries for information.

“Conversations are happening,” she said. “The willingness to talk about this and recognizing its importance and being proud about making progress, I’m seeing all of that as enormous strides forward.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.