Achieving Diversity in the Boardroom and the C-Suite: Barriers, Biases, and Breakthroughs
Gerri Elliott
Gerri Elliott
Founder, Broadrooms LLC; Director, Whirlpool, Bed Bath & Beyond, Imperva, Puppet Labs and Charlotte Russe
Gerri is an independent director on the boards of public companies: Whirlpool, Bed Bath & Beyond and Imperva, as well as two private boards, Charlotte Russe and Puppet Labs. She is the founder of Broadrooms.com, a website serving executive women who serve or want to serve on corporate boards. She also serves on the advisory board of BoardList, a Silicon Valley effort to increase the diversity of technology boards. Formerly, Executive Vice President, Chief Customer Officer for Juniper Networks, she led the 4,000 person Go-to-Market Organization consisting of sales, system engineering, advanced technologies, marketing, services, support, partners and field operations.
Gerri is known as a go-to-market expert in technology companies given her three-decade history with Juniper, Microsoft and IBM. She was one of the most senior women at Microsoft as Corporate Vice President (CVP) of the Global Industry Solutions Group, Worldwide Public Sector and co-president of Microsoft’s North American Enterprise Sales region. At IBM, she held executive positions in North America and Asia Pacific in sales, services, consulting, strategy development, and product management. She was VP of the Distribution Sector (retail, wholesale, consumer packaged goods, travel and transportation) for Asia Pacific, residing in Tokyo for two years. She was later promoted to the larger role of leading that organization for North America.
She is a 2013 YWCA Silicon Valley Tribute to Women (TWIN) award winner and was profiled in Diversity Journal’s Women Worth Watching list and 2016 Directors to Watch in Director and Board Magazine. She is a regular attendee at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit, and an inaugural mentor for the Fortune/US State Department Mentoring Program. She has spoken on numerous panels discussing leadership, diversity and board service, and was recently the keynote speaker at Intel/McAfee’s inaugural Women’s Leadership Summit.
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