Board Recruitment and Building a High Performing Board
Julia Brown and
Robin Toft will share experiences from the board and the board recruiter
viewpoints. We will also hear recent research from USD professor, Biljana
Adebambo, on traits that she has identified in successful CEOs.
SPEAKERS:
Julia
Brown
Julia R Brown, an executive from the life science industry, has
spent her career in pharmaceutical and biopharmaceuticals. She has served on
the board of directors of numerous drug development companies.
Brown is on the boards of Corporate Directors Forum and Cleantech
San Diego. She chairs the city’s Sustainable Energy Advisory Board. Brown is a
member of the National Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Brown is on the boards of UC San Diego Foundation and the San
Diego Symphony Orchestra.
Julia received the Hugh Friedman Award for Director of the Year
(2016), UC San Diego Chancellor’s Medal (2012) and was UCSD’s Honorary Alumna
of the Year (2014). Julia received CONNECT’s award for “Distinguished
Contribution to the Life Science Innovation”(2010) and won San Diego Business Journal’s “Women
Who Mean Business” award in 2006.
Julia holds a B.S. from Louisiana Tech University and a M.L.A.
from Harvard.
Robin
Toft
Robin Toft is the founder and CEO
of Toft Group Executive Search, where she combines a deep inside knowledge of
the life science industry with a passion for building game-changing management
teams. Robin has placed more than 500 executives at innovation-led companies in
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, life science
tools and digital health.
A champion of diverse executive
teams, Robin has built a reputation for recruiting women and minorities into
top roles and helping the life science industry overcome unconscious bias in
hiring. Prior to founding Toft Group in 2010, Robin served 20+ years as a
biotech executive.
In 2019, Robin authored her first
book, “WE CAN: The Executive Woman’s Guide to Career Advancement,” available on
Amazon. WE CAN offers practical insight, wisdom and encouragement for women to
realize the career of their dreams. It is recognized within the list of 100
Best CEO Books of All Time by BookAuthority.
Robin serves on multiple non-profit
boards, is an inaugural member of the Susan G. Komen San Diego Advisory
Council, was awarded Woman of the Year in San Diego in 2017, and a finalist in
Ernst & Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year awards in 2018 and
2019. She has been honored as a finalist for San Diego Business Journal’s
“Women Who Mean Business” and “Most Admired CEO” awards in multiple years.
Biljana
Adebambo
Biljana is an associate professor
of finance at USD. She was recently cited in The Wall Street Journal for her
research on CEO extraversion and the cost of equity capital, which she
conducted alongside Distinguished Professor of Accounting Robert Bowen and
Associate Professor of Finance Pengcheng Zhu. Article excerpt below.
The
Downside of Extroverted CEOs
While
talkative, energetic, sociable leaders may wow investors and employees, they
may not be good for business.
Public
companies run by chief executives with extroverted personality traits have a
higher cost of equity capital - the return shareholders demand for bearing the
risk of owning the asset - than otherwise similar firms with less-outgoing
CEOs, according to new research led by
Biljana Adebambo, an associate finance professor at the University of San
Diego. The cost of equity capital is a key measure of a firm's financial health
because it affects how investors value a firm and can affect the profitability
of coming projects, she says.
Date: November 12,
2019
Time: 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Venue:
The
Lodge at Torrey Pines, 11480 N Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037