A Conversation with Veta Richardson “Take Six: Essential Habits To Own Your Destiny, Overcome Challenges, And Unlock Opportunities”

Past Events

Friday, December 10, 2021, 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

@Webinar/Virtual : 

Co-Hosted by the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance and the Women’s Leadership Initiative at University of Delaware 

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​Veta Richardson achieved tremendous success as in-house counsel at Sunoco, Inc, as an advisor to three U.S. Presidential administrations, and now as the President and CEO of the Association of Corporate Counsel. In her debut book “Take Six: Essential Habits To Own Your Destiny, Overcome Challenges, And Unlock Opportunities,” she offers strategies for people at various stages of their careers to advance their professional goals. In this webinar, Veta Richardson and Professor Wendy Smith, Faculty Director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware will explore these strategies and how they can inform our own lives. While the book offers lessons that will resonate with everyone, women and diverse professionals will find it especially relevant.  

Bios

Veta Richardson:  Veta Richardson brings more than three decades of experience in the legal, business, and academic realms. She was in-house counsel to Sunoco, Inc. in Philadelphia for +10 years before moving into chief executive roles at two different nonprofit associations focused on serving the in-house counsel community. Veta has been an advisor to three U.S. Presidential administrations (Clinton, Bush, Obama) and countless Fortune 500 executives regarding diversity and inclusion issues. She is a thought leader on governance topics, especially concerning the role of the chief legal officer. Veta is also a fellow of the National Association of Corporate Directors, holds its certified director credential and was named four times to the prestigious Directorship 100 list. She serves on the Advisory Boards of both the John L Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance as well as Ethisphere, Inc, a for-profit company dedicated to advancing business integrity, compliance, and ethics as a strategic corporate advantage. As a new author, Veta’s goal is to unpack career advice that will help others to achieve their professional goals and stay true to themselves along the way.

Wendy Smith: Wendy Smith is the Emma Smith Morris Professor of Management at the Lerner School of Business and Economics and the Faculty Director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware. Her research explores how we solve our greatest dilemmas –tensions between managing for today and exploring for tomorrow, seeking new opportunities and honoring existing traditions, improving social conditions and addressing financial realities. While we tend to address these competing demands as either/or problems that require us to choose between them, Wendy’s research finds that we gain more creative and sustainable options from adopting both/and approaches that accommodate these paradoxical competing demands simultaneously. She describes these ideas in her TedxTalk “The Power of Paradox”. Wendy has been named as a Highly Cited Research – one of the top 0.1% of cited researchers in the field of business – in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Her upcoming book Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, will be published by Harvard Business School Press (August, 2022).

Women’s Leadership Initiative at University of Delaware:  The Women’s Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware (WLI) seeks a more just and sustainable world by advancing gender equity from the classroom to the boardroom. To do so, WLI provides education, training and research that enable students, faculty, alumni and executives to foster connections and build critical skills that can support women and advance equity and inclusion.  https://lerner.udel.edu/centers/womens-leadership-initiative/

John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance:  The John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance was established in 2000 at the University of Delaware and is part of the Lerner College of Business and Economics.  It is one of the longest-standing corporate governance centers in academia, and the first and only corporate governance center in the State of Delaware, the legal home for a majority of the nation’s public corporations.  The Center’s mission is to provide a forum for business leaders, members of corporate boards, stockholders, the judiciary, the legal community, academics, students, and others interested in corporate governance issues to interact, learn and teach, with the goal of positively impacting and improving the field of corporate governance and the capital markets.  The Center is recognized as a thought leader in the corporate governance field.  https://www.weinberg.udel.edu/

“Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters” (Virtual)

Past Events

Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM @Virtual : 

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To order a copy of the book, go HERE

The Weinberg Center will be hosting a webinar featuring Jon Lukomnik and James Hawley focusing on their newly published book, “Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters”.  The book tells the story of how Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) revolutionized the investing world and the real economy, but is now showing its age. MPT has no mechanism to understand its impacts on the environmental, social and financial systems, nor any tools for investors to mitigate the havoc that systemic risks can wreck on their portfolios. The authors believe that it’s time for MPT to evolve.

BIO – JON LUKOMNIK

BIO- JAMES HAWLEY

John L. Weinberg Distinguished Speaker – Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster (Virtual)

Past Events

Wednesday, May 12, 2021, 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM @Webinar : 

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VIEW RECORDING OF THE VICE CHANCELLOR’S TALK

The Weinberg Center will be hosting a webinar featuring Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster from the Delaware Court of Chancery and the Weinberg Center’s 2021 John L. Weinberg Distinguished Speaker. BIO

The John L. Weinberg Distinguished Speaker series was begun by the Center as part of the Center’s initiative to highlight a prominent speaker who focuses on current and relevant corporate governance topics.  This year we are delighted to host The Honorable J. Travis Laster, Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery. 

Vice Chancellor Laster’s talk is titled “Purpose, Power, and Fiduciary Duty: Dimensions of Delaware’s Corporate Law Regime.”  A short description of his talk follows:

The past two years have witnessed a reinvigorated debate over the purpose of the corporation, framed as a contest between a duty to prioritize the interests of stockholders and the ability to consider and balance the interests of multiple stakeholders. Delaware adheres to a traditional view of corporate law. That view, which dates back to the nineteenth century, imposes fiduciary duties on directors to pursue the best interests of the corporation for the ultimate benefit of its stockholders. But that view does not require that directors relentlessly seek to maximize the share price, nor that they follow the wishes of the holders of a majority of the shares. To the contrary, that view obligates directors to promote the long-term value of the corporation as a presumptively permanent entity, for the benefit of investors who have committed their capital indefinitely to the firm. Properly understood, a stockholder-oriented perspective requires the longest of long-term views, which necessarily requires consideration of stakeholder interests, as well as broader societal and environmental concerns.

This talk and the issues that will be highlighted are extremely important and timely.  We hope you will join us for this event.

DELAWRE CLE:  This webinar has been approved for 1.0 Delaware CLE credits.

Materials

• Leo E. Strine, Jr., “Our Continuing Struggle With The Idea That For-Profit Corporations Seek Profit,” 47 Wake Forest L. Rev. 135 (2012).– This article provides a thorough overview of the realities of stockholder-oriented governance.
  
  
• Frederick Hsu Living Trust v. ODN Holding Corporation, 2017 WL 1437308 (Del. Ch. Apr. 24, 2017). This is an edited version of a decision where the plaintiff alleged that the directors breached their fiduciary duties by prioritizing the interests of contractual claimants over their duties to stockholders. The contractual claimants in this case were preferred stockholders, but the legal principles apply to any contractual claimants.
  
• Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz,“It’s Time To Adopt The New Paradigm,” (Feb. 11, 2019). This memorandum from Wachtell Lipton captures the concerns that animate the move away from stockholder-oriented governance.
• Skadden, “Directors’ Fiduciary Duties: Back to Delaware Law Basics” (Feb. 19, 2020). This memorandum from Skadden provides a concise summary of existing Delaware law.
• The Business Roundtable, “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” (Aug. 19, 2019).This announcement from the Business Roundtable catalyzed the current debate over governance and demonstrated that the issue had gone mainstream.

“How Corporate Boards Can Effectively Oversee ESG Issues” (Virtual)

Past Events

Tuesday, April 20, 2021, 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM @Webinar : 

Co-Hosted with the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets

REGISTERVIEW RECORDING OF THE ROUNDTABLE

ESG issues are increasingly taking center stage in the boardroom and with investors.  The Weinberg Center and the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets are co-hosting a webinar roundtable discussion, which will focus on how corporate boards can effectively oversee environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.  In particular, as the risks from ESG issues such as climate change, water scarcity and human rights become more apparent, and with growing investor attention and action on ESG issues, it is increasingly important for corporate boards to understand how these issues affect business strategy and performance.

The Roundtable will review and discuss Ceres’ report, “Running the Risk: How Corporate Boards Can Oversee Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues,” which focuses on the critical role of the board in overseeing ESG risks in order to avoid potential financial losses and/or litigation, and to effectively respond to investor pressure.

In this webcast, the Roundtable participants will provide guidance on how boards can effectively oversee risks posed by ESG issues, and provide recommendations of questions directors should be asking management throughout the risk identification, prioritization and mitigation processes. Concrete recommendations will be offered for boards looking to improve their companies’ resilience in the face of ESG risks.

The Roundtable participants represent various constituencies – the corporate/director community, investor community, legal community, and academic community. The participants are:

• Veena Ramani, Senior Program Director, Capital Market Systems, Ceres (Moderator)
• Margaret Foran, Chief Governance Officer, Senior Vice President and Corporate Secretary, Prudential Financial, Inc.  
• Michael Younis, Vice President, Asset Stewardship Team, State Street Global Advisors
• Cynthia Williams, Professor, Osler Chair in Business Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and
• Susan Mac Cormac, Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP

Regardless of which of the Center’s valued constituencies you represent, the Roundtable will provide you with cutting-edge governance and ESG discussion and debate, as well as practical takeaways.

Delaware CLE:  The Roundtable has been approved for 1.5 Delaware CLE credits.

Materials:

• “Running the Risk:  How Corporate Boards Can Oversee Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues”
  
• “Turning Up the Heat: The need for urgent action by U.S. financial regulators in addressing climate risk” 
  
• “The Climate is Changing: What Every Board Member Needs to Know” (ACC Docket, November 2019)
  
• State Street Global Advisers (SSGA) 2020 Annual Stewardship Report
• SSAG Annual Climate Stewardship Review
• SSGA Q4 2020 Quarterly Stewardship Report
• SSGA Guidance on Enhancing Racial & Ethnic Diversity Disclosures
• Prudential Financial, Inc.:  2021 Prudential Environmental, Social and Governance Summary Report
• “Fiduciary Obligations and Climate Change”