EXPERIENCE AND FOCUS- ANA DUTRA

INDEPENDENT BOARD DIRECTOR FOR CME, HARVEST, FIRST INTERNET BANK

"WE WANT TO SEE A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF FIRST-TIME DIRECTORS BECAUSE THAT IS HOW WE INCREASE THE POOL OF LATINAS WHO ARE ON CORPORATE BOARD"

DURING her three decades of running companies in the technology and professional services area and as a corporate director, Ana Dutra has been a big exponent of continuous education

After receiving a bachelor's and juris doctors degrees from Brazilian universities, Dutra demonstrated her commitment to ongoing learning at her first job with IBM in her native Brazil, in her pursuit of an MBA at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, throughout her career in management consulting and more recently as a board member for several companies. Dutra, who speaks English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, is a global board director for CME Group. She also on the boards of Harvest Health and Recreation, First Internet Bank, Elkay Manufacturing, Lifespace Communities and M. Holland Company.

This education process, for Dutra continues as a board member. "The fact that I am an experienced corporate director does not mean that I stop studying and getting informed, said Dutra, who graduated Kellogg summa cum laude. "I have made a commitment to myself that every year I get a certification in something," she said. This year she is studying for a master's certification in corporate governance with the National Association of Corporate Directors (NCD).

Another of Dutra's causes is related to who serves on a board; “The one thing that has been a constant throughout my entire life was passion for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and in particular, for Latinos and women of color," she said. Dutra said, there is a need "to see anyone who looks like you in leadership positions, to feel accepted, to feel included." Currently, she is on the Latino Corporate Directors Association's board and active with its Board Ready Institute. "We look for Latinos who are almost there, almost board ready, put them through the program and try to place them in boards," she said.

Dutra leads the board diversity initiative of the Women's Business Collaborative. This role includes producing reports through a "a fantastic partnership" with Equilar to gather corporate data and with Bolster to connect high-growth companies with trusted and flexible executive talent. She also is very active with the Women Empowerment Network whose mission is to empower Latinas throughout the Americas. "Diversity inclusion has to be intentional and has to be measurable and has to be lead from the top or otherwise it just doesn't work," Dutra said.

She gives two primary reasons why there are not more Latinas and Latinos on boards. "The difficult part is called comfort zone," she said, and that people say if are going to have a woman, let’s have a woman that looks more like us." There also is the need to expand the pool of Latino candidates she said, so avoid recycling of the same people. "We want to see a high percentage of first-time directors because that is how we increase the pool of Latinas who are on corporate board," she said.

Dutra makes it clear that when one of her companies selects a Latino they are not doing this for her or for her community. "You are doing this for your business, doing this your employee community, your customers community, your suppliers, your investors, your partner communities," she said. "We are the segment in the U.S. economy that is growing the fastest, so when you make that decision, it is also is a good business decision because it increases innovation, because it increases different ideas, it increases your presence in different communities that you may not have."

Dutra recognizes directors face "a plate full of issues." Some are circumstantial and are related to the moment such as how to deal with the pandemic and its ancillary effects on getting people back to work. Boards are also paying a lot of attention to cyber security and digital transformation. Then there are what Dutra calls the surface issues that have always been there. This includes dealing with succession before there is a crisis, debt in general and how to protect the supply chain during a natural disaster. Meanwhile, she said the pace of Latino inclusion on boards is slow but faster than it was ten or twenty years ago.

Working with Equilar, Dutra saw that over the last six months more women were getting board seats with public companies but among women of color most seats went to African American and Asians. "For Latinas, the numbers are still dismal," she said. "If we want (and need) to see more Latinos on boards, and we are doing everything we can, but people need to do their part too such as learning about what boards do," Dutra said.

The last thing we want on a board is a Latino who is not a strong or effective director," the diversity advocate said, "then people say, 'you see we tried this person here and it didn't work.'"