David Chun is the founder and CEO of Equilar, one of the most trusted names in the corporate governance community. He has been recognized as one of the most 100 influential players in corporate governance by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).  In this episode we discuss how the Thanks for listening! We love our listeners! Drop us a line or give us guest suggestions here. Links Equilar website: https://www.equilar.com/ Equilar Diversity Network: https://www.equilar.com/diversity   As Corporate Boards Pursue Diversity, Director Training Programs Spring Up: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-corporate-boards-pursue-diversity-director-training-programs-spring-up-11640946604     Quotes   Founding of Equilar worked in investment banking for DLJ (Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette), and that was really the transformative experience for me to really learn about data, what's out there. I spent a lot of time going through SEC filings and recognized that, "Hey, there's an opportunity to potentially build the business around this data.     In '97, my wife and I moved out to California to help open up the DLJ Menlo Park office right in the heart of Silicon Valley, and when you're out here, especially in the late nineties, everybody wanted to start a company and so I said, "Hey, it's not going to get any easier for me. Let's go ahead and let's give it a shot."   It looks a lot easier from the outside, but kind of once you get in you'll realize, "Wow, it is hard." That's the reason 90-plus percent of businesses never make it beyond a couple of years.   I just happened to be at the right place at the right time with the executive compensation data that is essentially the foundation of our business.     Raza David, Joe and I have often talked on this podcast that the old excuse of "we can't find enough qualified" candidates is no longer really available, and I think what you're doing is the last mile step in bringing that to fruition!   David It's big data opportunity where there are, like I said, 1.2 million candidates. Having a lot of data is not the answer. The key is getting to the right data as quickly as possible, and so literally when somebody says, "I can't find candidates," I say, "Hey, do you have 10 seconds?"   You can get binders of information about women, but if you're not able to figure it out how you may be potentially connected to that individual, those binders and those lists are not that valuable because what  people are looking for is not only to show me candidates, but is there some level of connectivity to them?   Rate of increase in women directors of public companies The rate of change is pretty much at parity now, so its one-to-one so as new board seats are being refilled,  roughly a 50/50 balance, and we should reach parity by around 2030.   Big Ideas/Thoughts We mine the compensation that's disclosed in annual proxy filings. We also have our proprietary survey where we collect data compensation, that data that companies provide as part of a broader survey, and we've got close to a thousand companies that use our data for various benchmarking purposes.   You'll see us often cited in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and others, where they're looking for pay statistics   We have over just across 1.2 million profiles in our dataset of anyone who's been an executive or board member of a public company, private company non-profits and others, and so we are excited about how that's become, also a  way to better serve our clients. As we all know work diversity is a very hot topic right now on the agenda of every board, public, private, nonprofit, and others.   Within our BoardEdge product, we built up the Equilar Diversity Network where we partnered with over 50 different organizations to help match the demand and the supply for diverse talent,   We also allow people to claim their profiles, so people have gone in, they've enri