Ben Maiden, editor-at-large, Corporate Secretary
Ben Maiden is the editor-a-large of Corporate Secretary, having joined the company in December 2016. He is based in New York. He had previously been managing editor of Compliance Reporter since January 2007, covering regulatory and compliance issues affecting broker-dealers and asset management firms. Before that, Ben was editor of International Financial Law Review and IFLR’s Americas editor, working in London and New York.
Evan Barth, senior counsel, IBM
Mr. Evan Barth is Senior Counsel in the Corporate & Securities Group at IBM. Mr. Barth works on a wide range of corporate and securities matters, including legal support for the IBM board of directors, proxy disclosure, shareholder engagement, and general corporate governance matters. Mr. Barth is the President of the Fairfield-Westchester Chapter of the Society for Corporate Governance. Prior to joining IBM in 2008, Evan was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in the Capital Markets and Executive Compensation and Benefits practice groups and in the Capital Markets practice group at Loeb & Loeb LLP.
Mr. Barth holds a B.S. in Management from Binghamton University and a J.D. from NYU School of Law.
Veena Ramani, senior program director, capital market systems, Ceres
Veena leads Ceres’ work on critical market levers that will help scale the transition to sustainable capital markets. This includes governance systems that companies should put in place at the corporate board level to allow for effective board sustainability oversight. She also oversees Ceres work to engage financial regulators on climate change as a systemic risk, under the umbrella of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets. Veena is the author of the 2020 Ceres report, Addressing Climate as a Systemic Risk: A call to action for US Financial Regulators, which makes the case that climate change poses systemic risk to US financial markets, and outlines over 50 action steps that financial market regulators can take to address this risk. Veena has also authored and co-authored a number of reports on board sustainability governance including View from the top: How corporate boards can engage on sustainability performance (2015), Lead from the top: Building sustainability competence on corporate boards (2017), Systems Rule: How board governance can drive sustainability performance (2018), Getting Climate Smart: A primer for corporate directors in a changing environment (2018) and Running the Risk: How Corporate Boards Can Oversee Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues (2019).
Dottie Schindlinger, executive director, Diligent Corporation
Dottie Schindlinger is Diligent Corporation’s Governance Technology Evangelist and promotes the intersection of board governance and technology as a recognized expert in the field. Diligent is the leading provider of secure board communication and collaboration tools designed to promote improved performance for boards and leadership teams. In her role, Dottie provides thought leadership on related topics through digital and print publications, conference presentations, and workshops for board members and executives globally.
Dottie was a founding team member of BoardEffect, a board management software platform launched in 2007 focused on serving the governance needs of healthcare, higher education, associations and nonprofit organizations. Prior to BoardEffect, Dottie spent 15 years working in governance-related roles, including as a board liaison, board member, senior executive, consultant and trainer of private, public, and nonprofit boards. Dottie’s efforts helped BoardEffect expand from a four-person tech start-up to become an industry leader in the board portal space -- serving over 1,700 organizations and more than 120,000 board members and senior executives. In late 2016, BoardEffect was acquired by Diligent Corporation, becoming part of the largest player and industry leader in the secure board information management software space.
Dottie’s career has included roles as various as program development with the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, director of training and education for the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University, and associate faculty of La Salle’s Communication Department, teaching Public Speaking to incoming first-year students. Dottie currently serves as Vice Chair of the Board of the Alice Paul Institute, based in Mt. Laurel, NJ, and volunteers her time with several local nonprofits in the Philadelphia, PA region. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds certificates in Management and Board Leadership from The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University.
