As most of us know by now, companies with a strong proportion ofwomen on their Boards of Directors perform better—it’s just thatsimple. But right now, according to August 2012 statisticsfromCatalyst, thepercentage of board seats at Fortune 500 Companies held by women isonly 16.1 percent in the United States. Among theorganizations working to change this is 2020 Women on Boards (WOB),which has set a goal of increasing the percentage of women oncorporate boards to at least 20 percent by 2020.

To this end, one of WOB’s initiatives is called simply “12/12/12.”That’s the date—December 12, 2012—that the organization plans tohost a national conversation on gender diversity in U.S. corporateboardrooms. To understand more about this event and theorganization behind it, The Glass Hammer spoke with Malli Gero,WOB’s Executive Director and Co-Founder.

Jumpstarting Change

In December 2010, two executives with expertise in women’sleadership decided the time had come. Stephanie Sonnabend, who sitson two corporate boards and is president and CEO of Sonesta International HotelsCorporation, and Gero, principal of Gero Communications, were both awareof the slow progress women were making in the executive suites andboardrooms in U.S. companies. They thus launched a nationalcampaign in 2011 to try to do something about it.

“We started 2020 Women on Boards because we believed that untilcorporate stakeholders at all levels—employees,consumers, and shareholders—better understood what boards do andcared about board diversity as a way to get companies to betterreflect the needs of their stakeholders, there would be no intereston the part of companies to diversify their boards,” says Gero.Read the complete The Glass Hammer interview.