This report was produced through a collaboration between illumyn Impact (formerly Him For Her) and Crunchbase. Gené Teare of Crunchbase contributed to this study. Lauren Rivera, professor at Kellogg School of Management, co-authored the original 2019 benchmark study upon which subsequent annual research has been based.
Executive Summary
Since 2019, when we began benchmarking board diversity among U.S.-based private companies, we’ve seen a significant increase in the percentage of women directors (from 7% to 17%) and a reduction in the number of all-male boards (from 60% to 32%). The improvements we observed over the early years of our six-year tracking study have since plateaued. Recent analysis of the boards of 807 private, venture-backed companies with at least $100 million in cumulative funding reveals no meaningful change compared to the prior year.
As noted in our 2023 report, private company board development likely continues to suffer from a lack of prioritization in light of the relatively low number of IPOs and early-stage venture deals in 2024. Without the forcing function of an impending IPO or ready access to capital, CEOs and their boards tend to focus on operational challenges rather than board recruitment.
Several trends point to the potential for renewed momentum in the years to come, notably:
- Younger companies tend to have boards with more gender diversity;
- The percentage of women who hold investor-director board seats has increased significantly; and
- Fewer women directors are the only women in the boardroom, further extending the board network to a broader pool of candidates.
As venture funding increases and the IPO market improves, we expect to see another inflection point in the percentage of women on high-growth private company boards.
Key Findings
- Women hold 17% of board seats among the companies studied, up from 7% in our original study in 2019.
- Between 2019 and 2024, women gained two-thirds of a board seat (0.65); they now represent roughly 1.2 out of 6.9 board members.
- Nearly a third (32%) of companies don’t have any women on their boards, an improvement from 60% in 2019.
- 23% of company boards include a woman of color, up from 19% in 2020.
- Women hold 28% of independent director seats, 13% of investor director seats, and 10% of executive director seats, up from 19%, 5% and 4%, respectively, in 2019.
- 32% of directors are the only women on their boards, down from 44% in 2020.
- Proportionately fewer companies founded since 2015 have all-male boards (26%) compared with companies founded prior to 2016 (37%).
- The boards of these younger companies are significantly more likely to include a woman investor (17%) than those of older companies (10%).
Methodology
This tracking update largely reproduced the methodology employed with our prior studies published in December 2019, March 2021, March 2022, March 2023 and March 2024. For this update, we analyzed 807 of the most heavily funded private U.S.-based companies to understand the composition of their boards as of Q4 2024 — one year after the prior study and four years after the original.
Leveraging the Crunchbase database, we identified 2,829 U.S.-based private companies founded since 2003 with cumulative funding of at least $100 million as of June 30, 2024. To ensure that each company’s board profile was current, we included only companies that publish their board of directors on their website.
We then referenced company website data, Crunchbase profiles and other publicly available information to characterize the board members. The study included only board directors; board observers and/or advisers were excluded from the data set. For each company we segmented board members according to type of board seat: executive, investor or independent. In the few cases in which founders and past executives remained on the board despite no longer having an operating role at the company, we classified them as “executive directors” in recognition of their original relationship to the company. We identified gender by referencing professional profiles on Crunchbase and, when not available, other sites. For racial/ethnic identity, we leveraged self-identification information where available and supplemented that with contextual information and visual identification. As reflected by U.S. Census Bureau data collection, people of color include Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino. Those with MENA backgrounds are not included among people of color.
About the Authors
illumyn Impact (formerly Him For Her) is a social impact organization with a mission to diversify the board ecosystem, which is building and shaping the future: from healthcare, to AI, to climate change and beyond. Drawing from its ever-growing referral-based talent network of 8,000+ under-networked executives, a third of whom are women of color, illumyn Impact makes highly-curated introductions that bring fresh expertise into the boardroom. illumyn Impact is proud to partner with 100+ leading private equity and venture capital firms. A 501c3 corporation, illumyn Impact operates through the generosity of its founding partners GV, IVP, L Catterton, Mayfield Fund, Silver Lake Partners, SoftBank, Starboard Value and Tiger Global Impact Ventures; and supporters like Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Weiner, Nasdaq and many others. Its sister organization, illumyn, supports underrepresented executives in some of the world’s largest companies through its corporate boardroom excellence fellowship program.
Crunchbase is a predictive intelligence solution that forecasts private market movements using the unique combination of live private company data, AI, and market activity from more than 80 million users. It helps investors, dealmakers, and analysts be the first to find and act on opportunities. To learn more, visit crunchbase.ai and follow Crunchbase on LinkedIn and X.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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