Best Buy's Road to Gender Parity in the Boardroom: It's not about tokenism, it's about business strategy and doing the right thing.

• Author: Tahmincioglu, Eve
• Position: THE CHARACTER OF THE CORPORATION

Kathy J. Higgins Victor was the lone woman on Best Buy's board for six years, but after many frank board discussions about the value of diversity and the hiring of a new CEO in 2012 who was committed to a diverse C-suite and boardroom, things began to change.

Today, Best Buy has gender-balance in the boardroom. Of the 12 board members on Best Buy's board, six are women and six are men.

"We didn't set out to achieve gender parity; we set out to bring in candidates who have the skill sets to support the future strategies of Best Buy," stresses Higgins Victor, who has been on the board since 1999. "We simple insisted they were diverse. As a result, we have gender parity."

What Best Buy has achieved is unusual for corporate boards. The most recent data from governance research firm Equilar shows that among the Russell 3000 board seats, women held only about 18%.

The persistently low number is causing growing unease for company leaders, many of whom have accepted the evidence that gender equity on boards bolsters governance and the bottom line. Gender equity in the boardroom is also an environmental, social and governance issue, and one that many institutional investors have focused on. And there's the small but growing movement in the United States to mandate more women on corporate boards, including a law that passed in California last year, and a proposed bill in New Jersey.

For Best Buy, all these are part of the drive-for-gender-equity equation, and part of the company's overall focus on being a good corporate citizen and a successful company, says Higgins Victor. "The board has a foundational belief that diversity is important to our business, our employees, our customers and our shareholders, and to long-term value creation."

The board looks at the issue as a strategic necessity, not a nice-to-have, and that concept is at the heart of their search approach.

"When bringing in skill sets to grow the company, it's not about a token," she explains. "When you have diverse voices, you have a much more frank and candid discussion."

So how did they do it?

Having a CEO who's passionate about diversity, and social issues overall, helped move the needle, she says.

Indeed, chairman and CEO Hubert Joly has talked publicly about the fact that the purpose of a corporation is not to make money. "I believe the purpose of a company is particularly to contribute to the common good: its customers, its employees and to the community in which it operates," he...