Why Aren’t There More Black CEOs?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I remember in 2000 when you became CEO at Time Warner, you said that this was just the beginning and the wave would continue because that was the first wave of senior black CEOs. But it didn’t continue, did it?

RICHARD PARSONS, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, TIME WARNER: It didn’t. And I was wrong. And it’s still somewhat of a mystery to me why the wave didn’t, but since I happen to know personally, you know, dozens of African-American men and women who are super qualified and prepared to take that next step to the CEO position, and it just hasn’t happened.

AMANPOUR: All right. So, we’re going to dig into that. Darren Walker, how — I mean, it’s also very rare to see a black president of a major foundation, and you also had to struggle against the biases that you faced. And, again, why do you think there wasn’t a wave that one was predicting, perhaps, in 2000 when the first — you know, the first level rose to CEO?

DARREN WALKER, PRESIDENT, FORD FOUNDATION: Well, thank you, Christiane. I was born in the bottom 1 percent of the population in the United States, and I now am firmly in the top 1 percent. So, in many ways, I, like Dick, manifest the American dream in blackness. But the problem that you’ve identified is that we do not have, at the highest levels of Corporate America, representation of African-Americans, and that is in part because when you look at the boards of these corporations, you see very few African-Americans. And until there are African-Americans on corporate boards, which is where the power rests, this is about power in the American economic system, and that power does not rest with African-Americans, and it will not until and unless we see change at the board level. When we see changes at the board level, you will see changes in the C suite. It is no surprise that two of those former CEOs who were here, Ursula Burns and Ken Chenault were at American Express and Xerox, and Vernon Jordan was their sponsor. As Dick says, as he knows so well, you must have sponsors and you must have white sponsors, white people, white men especially, willing to champion your cause, and we do not see enough of that in Corporate America.