Ruth Simmons, the former Brown University president, is joining payment company Square’s board, becoming its second female board member, The Huffington Post reported Wednesday (Aug. 5).
She joins Mary Meeker and also becomes the second African-American member on the board, alongside Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the basketball player.
Simmons was president at Brown University from 2001 to 2012, after having been president of Smith College from 1995 to 2000. At the latter institution, Simmons led the creation of the first American women’s college engineering program.
In addition to the Square board post, Simmons is a member of the boards of Chrysler and Mondelez.
In an article about the appointment, The Huffington Post noted that the presence of two women on a board is an “extreme rarity in the startup world. Most tech startups have, at most, a single female board member. In fact, none of the private billion-dollar startups, known as ‘unicorns,’ have more than one woman on their board,” the site noted, pointing to research done by Fortune.
As the Post remarked, it is an even rarer occasion to see an African-American sit on a startup’s board. “Indeed, it’s unusual to see a black person on any company’s board,” said the site. “Several major tech outfits including Facebook and Apple have no black board members. It’s also worth noting that both the social network and the iPhone maker have a huge number of black customers.”
Square has not made its overall staff diversity numbers available, the Post reported. But the startup does have female leaders, including CFO Sarah Friar and Engineering Lead Alyssa Henry. And Square supports programs aimed at getting more women into tech, such as College Code Camp and High School Code Camp.
Among the other Square board members: Roelof Botha, founder Jack Dorsey, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, David Viniar, Vinod Khosla and Jim McKelvey.
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