Leading by example

If there were any question that Doug Chia is among the most influential people in the corporate governance community, his achievements in 2013 erased all doubt. In July the assistant general counsel and corporate secretary of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was voted chair-elect of the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals (SCSGP), establishing him as a respected leader of one of the top governance organizations in the US.

Chia has certainly earned a vote of confidence from his colleagues: he has served on the SCSGP’s board of directors for a number of years, chaired the organization’s national conference in 2012 and has contributed to many amicus briefs and comment letters to regulators on issues important to its membership.

Chia has also shown himself to be masterful at getting different groups working together to tackle complex problems. In April a group of six pharmaceutical companies and institutional investors came together under the leadership of J&J to approve a set of principles for recouping incentive compensation from corporate executives who violate corporate compliance or other healthcare laws. Chia played a key role in getting the initiative started and keeping it moving. The resulting clawback provisions were hailed as potential best practices for the industry, and the collaborative effort has given shareholders confidence that corporations are serious about preventing future unethical behavior.

At J&J, Chia directed the revamping of the company’s proxy statement this year, including the addition of a proxy summary page and an executive summary of the compensation discussion and analysis, complete with key compensation highlights. He has built a strong stakeholder outreach and engagement program that collects information from a variety of individual and institutional investors, and some of that information was used to make compensation program changes within J&J’s proxy statement this year.

Chia was one of the early adopters of social media, and he regularly encourages J&J shareholders to vote their proxies online. He was one of the first corporate secretaries to start a regular blog about corporate governance matters and he continues to be involved in social media today, tweeting important governance information to others in the industry whenever he can.

As well as handling his regular duties at J&J, Chia serves on a number of important committees that make decisions affecting corporate governance, including the Broadridge Investor Communication Services Steering Committee and the Corporate and Securities Law Committee of the Association of Corporate Counsel. For being a leader in the governance industry in 2013, Chia is Corporate Secretary’s governance professional of the year in the large-cap category.

For photos of the 2013 awards, click here.