Paul Washington: "The Roles of the Board in the Era of ESG and Stakeholder Capitalism."

Welcome to the Boardroom Governance Podcast. I’m your host, Evan Epstein. In this episode, I talk with Paul Washington, the Executive Director of The Conference Board ESG Center, a nonprofit think tank addressing corporate governance, sustainability, and citizenship, since 2019. The Conference Board itself was founded in 1916 and has led the effort to ensure that a more prosperous, resilient world emerges from difficult times by providing Trusted Insights for What's Ahead. Before joining the ESG Center at The Conference Board, Paul served for nearly 20 years as an executive at Time Warner, including as Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, as well as Chief of Staff for the company’s Chairman and CEO. Paul has also served on over two dozen boards of cultural, civic, and professional nonprofit organizations, including as the former Chairman of the Society for Corporate Governance. He also served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School where he taught corporate governance for over a decade and later served as a Resident Fellow. In this podcast, we discuss some of the key insights from a recent publication from The Conference Board called “The Role of the Board in the Era of ESG and Stakeholder Capitalism.” We also tackle some current trends, including SVB and the banking crisis, the politicization of ESG and the different types of “anti-ESG” backlashes. In addition, we address pass-through voting practices at large institutional investors, geopolitics in the boardroom, and other relevant insights for corporate directors. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can find all the show notes on the website boardroom-governance.com and please feel free to subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com