January 2022 Member Spotlights

Every month, we highlight a powerful group of theBoardlist candidates with diverse backgrounds and skillsEvery month, we highlight a powerful group of theBoardlist candidates with diverse backgrounds and skills, all currently available for board roles. Here are the January 2022 member spotlights.

Click on their profiles to learn more and get connected.

A board director at Hathaway, San Francisco Ballet Association, 3VR Inc., The Center for Reproductive Rights, and more—Karla Martin is an operational executive, strategist, and business advisor with a successful track record of building businesses, driving profitable growth, leading innovation, and advising CEOs on their most significant strategic and operating decisions.

Karla has unique expertise in strategy development, omnichannel retail, e-commerce/digital expansion, retail, marketing, and innovation. She is experienced at helping companies manage through all stages of growth and business cycles (seed funding to scale) and adept at issues such as market development and developing business plans to drive profitable growth, people management, and organizational effectiveness. She has extensive experience growing digital, omnichannel and technology businesses.

Karla is a published expert on retail strategy and operations, innovation, organizational effectiveness and complexity reduction and is a passionate advocate for increasing diversity and inclusion in the C-Suite and the Board Room.

Lauri Shanahan has over 25 years of executive and board leadership experience across a number of global, omni-channel and multi-brand consumer businesses as well as private, high-growth companies from a diverse array of industries including retail, consumer products, consumer services and hospitality. Ms. Shanahan is a highly respected strategist who works closely with her peers and executive teams to identify near and long term opportunities to scale consumer brands and businesses within and beyond the core. She is regarded as a trusted advisor and thought partner and known for her collaborative approach in aligning diverse priorities and removing obstacles to growth. Ms. Shanahan is an expert in corporate governance, corporate sustainability, leadership development and executive compensation and has extensive experience with activist investors and founders.

Ms. Shanahan currently serves on the board of directors of three public companies: Deckers Brands (NYSE: DECK), a $5.4B global, omni-channel footwear, accessories and apparel lifestyle company with a portfolio of well-known brands (e.g. UGG, Hoka, Teva); Treasury Wine Estates (ASX: TWE), an Australian, $13.5B vertically-integrated global wine company with a portfolio of over 70 brands (e.g. Penfold’s, BV, Beringer, Stags’ Leap and Sterling); and Cedar Fair Entertainment Company (NYSE: FUN), one of the largest regional amusement park, sports park, immersive entertainment and resort operators with a $3.1B market cap. She previously served as Chair of the Compensation Committee at Deckers for seven years, Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee at Cedar Fair, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Charlotte Russe, a hybrid fast-fashion/specialty retailer with 500+ stores.

Ms. Shanahan was previously EVP, Chief Administrative Officer of Gap Inc., a global, multi-brand, omni-channel retailer with over $16B in annual revenues. She served on the Executive Leadership Team and was involved in leading the company’s domestic and global expansion, with direct oversight responsibility for key strategic initiatives as well as operating and administrative functions serving all brands and business units. Over her 16 years with the company, Ms. Shanahan worked closely with Gap Inc.’s founders, Board of Directors and five CEOs on long-range planning and strategic alternatives, attending all board and committee meetings for over a decade. She was recognized as one of the “40 Most Influential People” of Gap Inc. during its first 40 years.

Dr. Leana Wen is a practicing physician and healthcare executive. She serves as an independent board member of Glaukos Corporation (NYSE: GKOS), where she is on the audit committee. She also serves as chair of the advisory board of the Behavioral Health Group, and is a member of the board of directors of the Bipartisan Policy Center and Baltimore Community Foundation.

Her previous board experience includes being board chair of Behavioral Health System Baltimore for four years and serving on boards and advisory of boards of more than ten nonprofit and venture-backed health innovation companies. Past committee service includes being chair of the governance committee; board secretary and treasurer; and member of audit and finance, oversight, advocacy, education, and investment committees.

Dr. Wen has extensive experience in public policy and regulatory affairs, including having served as the health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating health department to combat the opioid epidemic and improve maternal and child health. She has conducted health systems research in China, South Africa, United Kingdom, and Rwanda, among other countries. An expert in public health, she is a visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. Wen obtained her medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine and studied health policy at the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She completed her residency training in emergency medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School. She's the author of two books, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests (St. Martin’s Press, 2013) and Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health (Metropolitan Books, 2021). A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Wen has received recognition as one of Modern Healthcare's Top 50 Physician-Executives, World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders, Governing’s Public Official of the Year, and TIME’s 100 Most Influential People.

Grace Schalkwyk is the CEO of Gramercy Digital Strategy Advisors and currently serves on the boards of Salisbury Bancorp, Inc., Exchange Income Corporation, Crescendo Inc. Music Program, and Overbond Ltd.

Grace’s strategic thinking and financial acumen developed as an investment banker to Canadian and US companies in 30 industries (Credit Suisse, 12 years). Her expertise in operating, growth strategy, and scaling developed as general manager of $200 million global financial information business (S&P Global, Reuters, 11 years) and she has developed international experience in operating and financing.

A tech-savvy Audit committee chair and SOX financial expert with public company CFO experience, Grace is an experienced advisor to fintech and other technology companies. She is also an NACD Board Leadership Fellow with public, private, and NFP board experience. Grace holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) with Honors from the University of British Columbia, with executive education in general management from Columbia Business School and INSEAD. She is a Canada/US dual citizen.