Firstboard.io® Announces Partner Network and Founding Partners Working to Increase Women on Tech Boards

Harnessing the support of industry leaders from the tech industry to increase the representation of women on private company boards. Firstboard.io®, a curated network of highly qualified and diverse technology leaders, announced today the launch of its Partner Network and its Founding Partners working to support the organization's efforts and increase the representation of women in the boardrooms of private companies.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 16, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The representation of women in the tech industry still hovers at less than 30% and in the boardrooms of privately held companies the number of female board members is much lower. Only 14% of board director seats for private companies are held by women, and 56% of early-stage private companies had zero-woman directors, according to a 2022 report by the Women Business Collaborative in partnership with 50/50 Women on Boards.

"We all have a part to play in creating a diverse workplace, including at the board-level, and we applaud our partners for taking an active role in increasing the number of women on tech company boards," says Rita Scroggin, Founder of Firstboard.io. "Working with our partners we want to make visible for consideration highly qualified women ready to serve on boards. "

The new Firstboard.io founding partners are all leaders in the technology space with investment, consulting, legal and GTM expertise who are active in building businesses. Firstboard.io invites corporate partners who want to support efforts to increase the representation of women on private company boards to contact Firstboard.io and join the Partner Network.

The new founding partners of Firstboard.io are:

Monica Nayar
Monica Nayar is the office managing partner for PwC's Silicon Valley practice serving as the face of the firm to the local community and businesses. With almost 20 years of experience, she has held responsibilities across market, solutions, and service teams, with a primary focus in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications and Private Equity sector.

Natasha Allen
Natasha Allen is a partner based in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco offices of Foley & Lardner LLP, where she serves as Co-Chair for Artificial Intelligence within our Innovative Technology sector, Co-Chair of the Venture Capital Committee, and is a member of the Venture Capital, M&A and Transactions Practices. Natasha is a strategic advisor, supporting her clients in complex decision making.

Ally Millar
Ally Millar is a partner with PwC's consulting business based in Silicon Valley. She partners with clients on mission critical business transformations to launch and scale new "as a service" business models that drive revenue growth and forward valuation multiples. Ally has spent her career leading large scale digital transformations and technology implementations which put the customer at the very heart of the business. She leads PwC's "Anything as a service" within PwC's Cloud and Digital practice and specializes in the Technology industry where she helps hyper growth and fortune 500 clients alike remake the Customer experience and operations across all channels, routes to market and offering types.

Gorka Sadowski
Gorka Sadowski has spent the last 30 years in cybersecurity, both in established as well as emerging market categories. Most recently he was a Gartner analyst where he was covering mature categories such as SIEM,and helped create new categories such as UEBA and SOAR. Now as Chief Strategy Officer at Exabeam, he is the driving force behind the XDR Alliance, an alliance of thought-leading cybersecurity vendors that band together to bring clarity on the confusing XDR market category.

Apoorva Pandhi
"Apoorva loves the complexity and thrill of the 0 to 1 startup phase and feels fortunate to work with deeply technical and product-centric founders. He finds them tackling the hardest challenges in AI/ML, data infrastructure and cloud-native infra. As a Managing Director at Zetta, he is excited to partner with founders who are ready to push through and beyond the complex chaos of this early stage to unleash greater potential and market impact.

Over the years, Apoorva has experienced this frenzied energy, firsthand. He has been in the trenches with early-stage engineering-first startups in different modalities. He has partnered with several AI/ML and engineering-first companies as an investor at Lightspeed Ventures and then Foundation Capital."

Rahul Kannan
Rahul Kannan is a Business Builder and Operator with deep GTM expertise and in running Global Sales and Marketing, Strategy, Product Management teams. He has a proven track record of driving consistent high double-digit growth and experience scaling businesses from $10M to $300M+ ARR. Vertical areas of focus across B2B SaaS include IoT, Sales and Marketing Tech, Quote to Cash, Business Applications. He was most recently at Zuora leading their Multiproduct GTM and prior to that at Jasper (acquired by Cisco) where he transformed Jasper's business model and helped Jasper achieve market leadership in the IoT space. He is extremely passionate about GTM, in building diverse teams and in enabling people to succeed.

Alidad Vakili
Alidad is Of Counsel and a business lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, based in the firm's San Francisco office where he is a member of the Transactions Practice Group. Alidad regularly advises his clients at all stages of company growth from formation to exit. Alidad provides business and legal advice to entrepreneurs, founders, startups, emerging growth companies, and investors. Alidad regularly advises startups, emerging growth companies, and investors on a wide range of issues, including general corporate matters such as formations, corporate governance, as well as debt and equity financing, venture capital financing, and commercial matters across a number of industries, including technology, health care, clean energy, as well as other industries. Alidad's experience also includes project finance for renewable energy development and cross-border transactions. Prior to joining Foley, Alidad was counsel in the San Francisco office of a global law firm in the corporate M&A and emerging growth and venture capital practice groups.

Chris Hillock
Chris leads the portfolio development function for Dell Technologies Capital globally. His team provides business development services and go to market support to help portfolio companies validate product market fit, establish, and then execute their scaling strategies. He appreciates how the DTC investment team combines deep domain expertise and diverse perspectives on the enterprise to offer portfolio companies informed, actionable points of view. An operating executive with a background in sales leadership and general management, Chris brings more than 20 years of experience in leading cross functional global sales teams and scaling emerging startup technologies, cloud infrastructure and software solutions.

About Firstboard.io
FirstBoard.io is a curated collective of diverse technology leaders who have been in key operating roles at startups and private and public technology companies. FirstBoard.io is an invite-only community of highly qualified women ready to serve on corporate boards, who have been selected based on criteria including technical depth, operational leadership, and go-to-market experience, amongst other criteria. FirstBoard.io does not charge its members a fee. Learn more about FirstBoard.io and its mission at https://www.firstboard.io.

Media Contact

Rita Scroggin, FirstBoard.io, 1 415-851-3446, [email protected]

SOURCE FirstBoard.io