Corporate Secretary has announced the panel of judges – including two new members – who will be deciding the winners of this year’s Corporate Governance Awards, for which submissions are due by the end of this month.
Paul Washington, executive director of the Conference Board ESG Center, joins this year’s group of judges. Washington previously served as senior vice president, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary of Time Warner, and was the recipient of the 2018 Corporate Governance Award for lifetime achievement.
The other new addition to the panel is Matthew Geekie, who has been senior vice president, secretary and general counsel at Graybar Electric Company since August 2008. Graybar has won the prize for best overall governance for a private company at the Corporate Governance Awards multiple times in recent years.
Washington and Geekie join fellow industry experts who have been members of the panel in previous years:
- Lydia Beebe, corporate governance expert, board director and founder of LIBB Advisors
- Douglas Chia, president of Soundboard Governance and fellow at the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance
- Lucy Fato, executive vice president and general counsel of AIG
- Carol Strickland, director of Trireme Energy Holdings and a member of its nominating and remuneration committee.
The submissions process for the 2019 awards is open, with entries due by Friday, July 26, 2019. Entries can be submitted using an online form that also includes information about the entry guidelines and category criteria.
Entries can be submitted free of charge by corporate secretaries, general counsel, compliance officers and other governance officials at any company listed/domiciled in the US, or by vendors and service providers on behalf of their clients. The international category is open to any publicly traded non-US company.
The winners of the 12th annual Corporate Governance Awards will be announced at a ceremony in New York on November 21. The categories open for nomination this year are:
- Best ESG reporting
- Best compliance and ethics program (small to mid-cap and large cap)
- Best shareholder engagement
- Best use of technology
- Best proxy statement (small cap, mid-cap and large cap)
- Best overall governance for a private company
- Best overall governance – international
- Governance professional of the year (small to mid-cap and large cap)
- Governance team of the year (small to mid-cap and large cap)
- Rising star
Finalists will be informed from early September and the full short lists will be released in October.
Details of last year’s awards can be found here.
Ben Maiden
Ben Maiden is the editor-at-large of Governance Intelligence, an IR Media publication, having joined the company in December 2016. He is based in New York. Ben was previously managing editor of Compliance Reporter, covering regulatory and compliance...
