Conference Board Leader Steps Aside

US-based research and business membership organization The Conference Board is to lose its President and CEO Richard E. Cavanagh, after eleven years. Cavanagh, 59, announced last week that he was stepping aside but expects to stay until the end of this year pending the appointment of his successor.

Cavanagh took the job in 1995 after serving for nine years as Executive Dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Earlier, he was a consultant and partner at McKinsey & Company for 15 years, taking a two-year leave of absence in 1977-79 to serve in major positions in the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter. He expects now to devote more time to non-profit activities and serving on corporate boards: he is already Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the non-profit Educational Testing Service (ETS), and an independent director on public company boards, including BlackRock (mutual funds), Arch Chemicals and the Guardian Life Insurance Company.

The Trustees of The Conference Board, chief executives of major companies who serve as the organization's governing body, will undertake a search for candidates to replace Cavanagh. The search committee will be chaired by Douglas R. Conant, President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company.

Samuel DiPiazza, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Chairman of The Conference Board's Board of Trustees, said that under Cavanagh's leadership the organisation 'prospered, extended its global reach, and helped reshape corporate governance and business practices like workplace diversity. We are lucky to have had him.'

Cavanagh's many achievements include leading the establishment in 2002, amidst a rising wave of corporate scandals, of the blue-ribbon Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise. The Commission called for a wide range of reforms in corporate governance practices, many of them controversial but since adopted by a majority of large companies in the US.

Today, The Conference Board's 2,000 corporate members worldwide include 19 of the largest 20 US firms, 80 percent of the Fortune 100, and all of Fortune's 'world's most admired companies.' It is online at www.conference-board.org

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.