GUILLERMO “GIL” MARMOL

INDEPENDENT BOARD DIRECTOR FOR THE VITAMIN SHOPPE, FOOTLOCKER

The historic role of a corporate board of directors, essentially to work with management in ensuring that a company remains on the right track, is unlikely to change, but in the new digital world the demands of governance are rapidly evolving, especially in the areas of diversity and skill sets.

This perspective is among the insights that Guillermo "Gil" Marmol has gleaned from his decades of work as a consultant and participant in digital transformation process and his membership on company boards. Since 2011 Marmol has served as a director for Foot Locker and also has lead his own investment and advisory services firm, Marmol & Associates since 2000. He also has served on other boards and was an independent director for Vitamin Shoppe from 2016 until 2019, when the company was acquired by what is the Franchise Group.

During his career, Marmol has found that that experience and vision remain valuable in corporate governance, but there is a whole array of new expectations that include diversity and as exemplified by Europe, expectations related to climate. "If you not speaking to those very directly and very credibly, you are going to have some problems," he advises. Other emerging priorities include being responsive to ESG (Environmental Social Governance) and ensuring that among the next class of CEOs and board members, "is that there is the appropriate depth and the appropriate addition of capabilities that are now required. In dealing with ESG, he said, there is a lot of pressure on boards from the investors, to ensure that the governance of the company, the development of the company is in concert with the expectations.

Another consideration for any board, Marmol said, especially in the retail sector where Footlocker is a major player, "is how the company is fully engaging with its customer base. Understanding that customer base in a very profound way and building the capability to serve that customer base in a very exacting way." For him, the path that took him to public boards started at McKinsey & Company, where he was an executive for 17 years. This was a great training ground, he said, because he worked with senior executives on issues of organization, direction, performance improvement, concerns that fall among the responsibilities of a senior leadership team and company board. "As a senior partner I had the option of permanent career of consulting, he said, "but I chose to move on."

Subsequently, Marmol spent a decade in technology services sector at Perot Systems then at Electronic Data Systems Corporation, thanks to an invitation of a former client and was executive during the company's massive turnaround. "EDS went from losing a half billion dollars the year I arrived (2003) to making a billion dollars the year I left (2007). Meanwhile, Marmol decided to "take a ride on the Internet wave" and during the "dot-com crash created his own professional services firm in 2000 by bringing together a series of smaller firms that did consulting in the Internet space. "I took the company public, and had my first experience with a board, which was not a normal experience because I was a CEO," he said. Still, he had the "fascinating experience of observing other board directors and how they played their role. "Since then I have been doing board work, some public, some private, and investing in early stage companies with the hope that one of them will grow up and do exceptionally well," he said.

Getting that first invitation to a corporate board is "by far the hardest" and "not an easy road to follow," However, in the case of Foot Locker, Marmol had a personal relationship in his favor. Ken Hicks, who had worked for him at McKinsey, who had just become chairman and CEO in 2009. "So we talked about his new role and I expressed my interest, he expressed his interest, and not before long I was on the board," Marmol said. "I bought several things to the party that were valuable to them," he said, "I had a decade of experience in technology service, I had worked closely with major organizations involved in technology transformations which is now is now called the digital journey."

Moreover, he said, "I also could also bring a perspective of corporate strategy that was not fully represented on the board."

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