Genevieve Bell must have a shot at replacing Catherine Livingstone as chair of CBA. Maybe soon.
Commonwealth Bank is a rare bird in banking, an achiever and a leader in the world of affirmative action. And with a heck of an old boys culture to overturn.
Anne Templeman-Jones, Wendy Stops and Mary Padbury makes five. Four blokes in the CBA board including the CEO.
In Matt Comyn’s C-suite a push is overdue, 13 spots and four women.
The confines of CBA adheres to widespread big business culture. There are safe zones for women of talent and the bank to its disgrace places the women in HR, legal and as mentioned, managing media.
American import Priscilla Brown, Group Executive, marketing and corporate affairs, is the new and big name, wondering a little about this stage in life’s adventure.
As general counsel we find Carmel Mulhern, governance added to the job title, a recent thing. Mulhern trod the path from King & Wood Mallesons where she was senior associate
Sian Lewis is group executive, human resources, testing work at any time. An actual banker, Lewis headed the NSW retail network. HR was an earlier phase of her career.
One to watch on the CBA top team is Vittoria Shortt, ASB’s CEO in New Zealand, a proven training ground for banking CEOs needed on the western side of the Tasman.
Genevieve Bell has dug her spurs into her charge for 17 months as a non-executive director of CBA ,and when you reread her bio it’s still a bit wow, someone as promising as this around to change the voice of board discussions.
A futurist, Bell is Distinguished Professor at the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University, Bell is the Florence Violet McKenzie Chair at the University.
Bell remains a Senior Fellow of Intel Corporation and is the Vice President of the Intel Product Assurance and Security Group.
And tonight Genevieve Bell gets a turn on Q&A. On ABC2 only it’s channel 20.
9.30 tonight.