Women on Boards: The superheroes of tomorrow?

Can female directors help save economies and the firms on whose boards they sit? Policy-makers seem to think so. Numerous countries have implemented boardroom gender policies because of business case arguments. While women may be the key to healthy economies, Renée argues that more research needs to be done to understand the benefits of board diversity.

Renée B. Adams is Professor of Finance at the University of New South Wales. She is also the Director of UNSW Business School’s Women in Leadership Network, former Director of the Finance Research Network (FIRN), an Affiliate of LSE’s Financial Markets Group, Senior Fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research and Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute. She holds an M.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Professor Adams’ research focuses on the organization of corporate boards. She has written papers examining the information flow between managers and the board, gender diversity on boards, governance problems in banks, group decision-making on boards and the governance of central banks. She has published in top accounting, economics, finance and management journals including the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, the Review of Economic Studies and Strategic Management Journal. In 2014, she was invited to join the editorial board of Management Science.

Professor Adams’ work on gender diversity in particular has received extensive media coverage. Her work has been featured in the Financial Times and the Economist amongst many others.

Professor Adams’ interest in gender diversity is not limited to research. In 2012, Professor Adams founded The F.E.W. (The Financial Economics Women Network), a support, development and lobbying group for female academics in Finance and Economics. She co-founded AFFECT, the American Finance Association’s “Academic Female Finance Committee”, in 2015.

The seminar is part of CBS Diversity Day. For more information on the day, see https://www.cbs.dk/en/the-press/events/diversity-day-2018