Untold stories.

PositionOpportunities for women to take leadership positions - Editorial

THERE ARE CERTAIN WORDS that get an editor's heart racing. Two such words are "untold story." That is what we have in this edition with the feature on Barbara Hackman Franklin and what she accomplished to open up opportunities for women to take on higher leadership positions on the public stage (see page 38).

I am happy to have known Barbara a long time. My first meeting with her came in the early 1980s, at a seminar for journalists hosted by The Wharton School during which she briefed a roomful of newspaper and magazine reporters on covering public policy issues. In combing my archives, it looks like we first connected on a published piece for DIRECTORS & BOARDS in 1985 when, as chairman of a presidential-appointed task force on trade policy, she addressed key tax reform proposals that were high on the radar screen of corporate boards. From that point on, over the next 25 years I have had the privilege and pleasure of being her editor in publishing a number of articles, on everything from compensation to proxy fights to board effectiveness.

I got my first inclination that something of an untold story was afoot when I interviewed Barbara in 2001 for the DIRECTORS & BOARDS "Oral History of Corporate Governance" (page 42). She told me she was just then in the early stages of assembling her archives of her unprecedented involvement in the Nixon administration to advance the role and numbers of women in leadership positions in the federal government. So when I learned that this untold story has now been told -- in the new book, A Matter of Simple Justice -- I knew it was time again for Barbara to make another appearance in these pages to share this important story with our readers.

An interesting appointment was announced just as I was editing the Heidrick & Struggles Governance Letter in this issue that advises on recruiting former government officials and retired military officers as...

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