Slack adds Edith Cooper to board of directors

Slack had added Edith Cooper, who most recently served as the global head of human capital management at Goldman Sachs, to its board of directors. As Slack prepares “for accelerated growth at scale,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield wrote in a blog post today, Cooper marks Slack’s second independent board member.

“She has an unrivaled depth of experience in the hardest challenges that modern organizations face, and Edith is going to be a huge asset as we continue to expand our capabilities,” Butterfield wrote. “She is a deep thinker, a good listener, and a wise strategist, and I’m thrilled to have her join us as Slack enters its next phase of growth.”

In March, Slack added its first independent board member, Square CFO Sarah Friar. Just last week, Slack named Allen Shim as its first-ever chief financial officer.

All of these appointments may signal Slack’s preparation to go public at some point. As Butterfield noted in his blog post, which he kicked off with some references to how public company executives operate, Cooper’s appointment is part of a longer-term plan to continue growing Slack.

Equally important, Cooper is a black woman. And it’s not just important from the ethical standpoint of inclusion, but from the perspective of financial bottom lines.

Companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity at the executive level are 33 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile, according to McKinsey’s 2018 report, “Delivering through Diversity.” And essentially the same goes for gender diversity, with companies in the top quartile for gender diversity being 21 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

This year has marked an increase in the number of black people on tech board of directors. Last month, both Airbnb and Facebook appointed Kenneth I. Chenault, the outgoing CEO of American Express, to their respective board of directors.

But the number of black women on tech company board of directors is very low. Of the major tech companies, Salesforce is the only other company with a black woman of its board of directors. Her name is Robin Washington, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gilead Sciences.

Slack, which launched about four years ago, said in September it had six million daily active users. In September, Slack raised a $250 million round led by Softbank, which valued the company at $5.1 billion.

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