How To Break Boardroom Barriers

Mandy Fields was just 10 years old when she first began to understand what she wanted to do with her life.

The chief financial officer of e.l.f. Beauty used to sit with her mom and help her sift through the household finances after her paycheck came in. “I was like her checkbook balancer,” she told our Jack McCullough in a podcast conversation for sister organization CFO Leadership. “It was the highlight of my week.”

Fields, who joined e.l.f. in 2019, has had a series of professional milestones since then, including posts at Albertsons, The Gap and Safeway—and a stint on the board of Allbirds. That experience, and her part in e.l.f.’s Change the Board Game initiative to bring greater diversity to corporate boards, makes her a great speaker for our next Women in Leadership online series, Breaking Boardroom Barriers on March 13 (join us!).

She’ll share details of e.l.f.’s eye-catching “So Many Dicks” media push last year, which noted there are more men named Dick on publicly traded boards than entire groups of underrepresented people. E.l.f. leadership is a firm believer that its diverse board—one of only four among the 4,200-plus U.S. publicly traded companies that is two-thirds women and one-third diverse—helps fuel business growth.

Fields’ story is filled with inspiration and tips for how women executives can reach the top rungs of leadership—and what it does for companies when they do. Among the “secrets” she shared in her podcast talk:

• Find the right fit. Fields worked in investment banking for JPMorgan after college, covering the oil and gas industry. “What I learned in that experience is that I loved banking, I loved everything finance, but I did not like the industry that I was covering. I intentionally set out to get into consumer.”
  
• Be fearless. Fields was interested in working for The Gap, but she didn’t know anyone there and “this was before the days of LinkedIn.” She “sent an email to every single combination of email address I could think of [to reach the CFO] and said, ‘I’m leaving investment banking. I would love to join your company. These are all the reasons why.’” A few weeks later, she had a job at The Gap. “If you want to pursue something, don’t be afraid to just reach out and see what happens,” she says. “The worst he could have done is not respond. Fine anyway.”
  
• Be a team player. Fields works closely with e.l.f. CEO Tarang Amin, who she says is “a great mentor to me. I go to him for so many things, even personally and professionally, even outside of what I do every day at e.l.f. He has helped me in how we communicate with the board, how we stay ahead of some of the things that they’re thinking of and making sure that we’re engaging with them at the right points with the right information.”

Fields will be joined by Anne Chow, former CEO of AT&T, current lead director on the board of Franklin Covey and board member at 3M, at our Breaking Boardroom Barriers online event. For more on how to navigate the path to board membership, join us on March 13.