The rising star award is intended to identify individuals who will be key contributors to the future of the profession. It is awarded to people who have been in a corporate role for less than five years and who have made a demonstrable impact in driving good governance or implementing change at their company.
Jung-Kyu McCann, who until recently served as Apple’s principal corporate and governance counsel, has raised the bar for the firm’s disclosure to shareholders and has demonstrated a commitment to engaging with the broader governance community, speaking at a number of public events. The judges praised McCann for her collaborative nature, whether internally at Apple or externally with the broader governance community. She has served as a panelist and speaker at a range of industry events, discussing topics such as diversity and inclusion, regulatory issues and ESG disclosure, and is an active member of the Society for Corporate Governance.
‘Jung is generous with her time and expertise,’ says Doug Stewart, vice president of securities and assistant secretary at Visa. ‘I trust her counsel and judgment. She is intellectually curious, a strategic thinker and interested in promoting corporate governance broadly.’
McCann joined Apple in 2014, and has played a particularly influential role in revamping the tech company’s proxy statement. Compared with the 2014 proxy statement, the 2016 edition is considerably more readable, with a greater sense of narrative flow. It opens with an executive summary, complete with bar graphs indicating the company’s three-year performance on net sales, operating income and earnings per share.
Another addition is a page outlining Apple’s values, providing metrics around the firm’s track record on topical social issues like the environment, privacy and security, and inclusion and diversity. These changes have transformed Apple’s proxy statement from a compliance document to an effective shareholder communication tool, on par with many of the company’s peers.
Shortly after joining Apple, McCann was involved in reinvigorating the company’s shareholder engagement program. Following extensive outreach to many of Apple’s top shareholders, proxy access emerged as a key issue. The company had defeated shareholder resolutions about it in the past and, according to the 2015 proxy statement, had been closely monitoring the practices being adopted at other Fortune 500 companies. It adopted proxy access in December 2015 and proxy access enhancements in 2016 to make the provisions even more shareholder-friendly.
Shortly after the Corporate Governance Awards, McCann left Apple to join Broadcom as associate general counsel for corporate and finance.
This article originally appeared in the Winter issue of Corporate Secretary.
Ben Ashwell
Ben Ashwell is the editor at IR Magazine and Corporate Secretary, covering investor relations, governance, risk and compliance. Prior to this, he was the founder and editor of Executive Talent, the global quarterly magazine from the Association of...
