Leading Man Award Winner: Vada Manager, Founder, CEO Pushes for Gender Equity, Balance & Fairness
Vada Manager, the 2022 Take The Lead Leading Man Awardee, at a recent keynote.
“I believe all business is personal.”
Vada Manager, founder and CEO of Manager Global Holdings, and President and CEO of Manager Global Consulting Group, has spent a lifetime following that mantra.
It is an underlying current in a purposeful and extremely successful global professional life that earns Manager the Leading Man Award presented August 26 at Take The Lead’s Power Up Concert & Conference.
Register here for the 2022 Power Up Concert & Conference: The Big RE: Rethink, Rewire, REcreate
“This award embodies four decades of behavior modeling of leadership for women, and how that makes entrepreneurs as well as our country better,” Manager says.
““This [Leading Man] award embodies four decades of behavior modeling of leadership for women, and how that makes entrepreneurs as well as our country better,” @VadaManager says. #powerupconference #womenleaders”
Read more in Take The Lead on Leon Silver, Leading Man Awardee 2020
Among many board appointments, Manager is corporate director for Valvoline, Inc. and senior counselor for APCO Worldwide. He has been business associates, partners and friends with Gloria Feldt, Co-founder and President of Take The Lead, and her late husband, Alex Barbanell, since Manager was a student at Arizona State University from 1979 to 1983 studying political science.
Barbanell, who passed recently just shy of his 92nd birthday, was married to Feldt for 44 years. He established the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean’s Council at ASU when Manager was a student there.
“I met Gloria and Alex as a college student and became friends with Alex. To have that memory of how he stood by her and how they made that team, I tried to carry that ethos into my life,” Manager says.
““I met @GloriaFeldt and Alex as a college student and became friends with Alex. To have that memory of how he stood by her and how they made that team, I tried to carry that ethos into my life,” @VadaManager says. #genderequality #maleally”
Feldt, who will deliver Manager his award at the Power Up Conference: The Big RE, says, “Men who support women in our quest for leadership parity are often called ‘allies.’ I prefer ‘partner’ because that signifies a fully equal relationship.”
Check out the Power Up Concert & Conference agenda here
She continues, “Vada is a true partner for gender and racial equality. Whether lending his influential voice to 50/50 Women on Boards, pushing his client companies to bring more women into leadership, or supporting the transformational work of Take The Lead, Vada is always a Leading Man.”
Gloria Feldt, the late Alex Barbanell, and Vada Manager at a recent Take The Lead event. (Photo courtesy of Vada Manager)
Take The Lead bestows the 2022 Leading Man award on Manager for a life and career that has spanned the country and the globe, sparked by his early days at ASU.
“@Takeleadwomen bestows the 2022 #LeadingMan award on @VadaManager for a life and career that has spanned the country and the globe, sparked by his early days at @ASU. #powerupconference”
Read more in Take The Lead on male partnership in leadership
Now a Hall of Fame alumnus of ASU, and an ASU Trustee since 2019, Manager says he came to college in Arizona after one summer visit as a high school junior.
“I had an uncle come out to Arizona after he was serving in the U.S. Air Force. I came to visit him as a high school junior over that summer and I thought it would be a great place to go for college,“ says Manager, who has been an advisor to the American Council in Germany, served as chair of U.S. Military Academy board from 2008-2019, Chair of The Issue Management Council from 2007-2009 and Senior professional advisor for Democratic National Convention and the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Growing up in East St. Louis, Ill., Manager says, “Most of my friends were going to University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and I thought I would have to wait behind the sons and daughters of members of Congress (for recognition) and I thought it might take longer to break through.”
Instead, he remembers thinking, “If you come to Phoenix, a big little city, and demonstrate authenticity, it will embrace you.” Joining the ASU Board of Regents at 20 years old, Manager says, “It paid off for me.”
As a student at ASU, Manager says he deliberately networked and tried to launch a career as quickly as he could. “When other students were maybe hitting the bars on a Friday night, I was networking and trying to distinguish myself.”
Raised by “a strong single mother with a great grandmother, grandmother, grandfather and mother in the house,” Manager says, “it was the women” who influenced his life and career most. “I served two elected officials who were women, so it gives me a unique perspective on how women lead.”
“Raised by “a strong single mother with a great grandmother, grandmother, grandfather and mother in the house,” @VadaManager says, “it was the women” who influenced his life and career most. #womenlead”
Those two officials were Arizona Governor Rose Mofford when he was press secretary from 1988-1992 and Washington, D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, when he was press secretary from 1992-1994.
After college in the late 80s, Manager says he studied in a non-degreed program at the London School of Economics and then worked as vice president of public finance at the firm, Young, Smith & Peacock. He then became vice president of Powell Tate (now Weber Shandwick) where he led a team to South Africa to assist in transition consulting for President Nelson Mandela.
From 1995-1997, Manager was senior manager at Levi Strauss, before moving to Nike, Inc. where he was Senior Director of Global Issues Management from 1997 to 2009, when Nike revenues grew from $6 billion to $18 billion.
Read more in Take The Lead from Minda Harts on diversity in leadership
Those global retail and consumer leadership experiences helped to further shape his perspectives. “My advice for men to being allies for women: Be fearless in your advocacy and understand how empowering women can fit into your organization,” Manager says.
““My advice for men to being allies for women: Be fearless in your advocacy and understand how empowering women can fit into your organization,” @VadaManager says. #maleally #womensequalityday”
“I learned at Levi’s and Nike that you need their perspective. You are derelict in your leadership responsibility if you are not helping and including women. Shareholders expect it,” as do consumers, he says.
Read more in Take The Lead on corporate board diversity
Still, the number of women in the C-suite globally remains extremely small. Forbes recently reports, “Women run just 4.8% of the companies on this year’s Fortune Global 500 list—a minuscule share that reflects barely any progress for female CEOs around the world over the past year.”
Listen to Gloria Feldt’s podcast on board diversity
The move to parity is also slow in the U.S. According to Forbes, “As of the Fortune 500’s publication in May, women ran 44 companies on the list, up slightly from 41 a year earlier. The Fortune 500 traditionally has had a higher representation for female CEOs than its global counterpart. The failure of both cohorts to add a greater number of women to their ranks was also influenced by low CEO turnover overall during the pandemic.”
Read more in Take The Lead on ways to diversify boards
Manager has long been doing his part to change those numbers. Named to Savoy Magazine’s 2016 list of most influential Black corporate directors, diversifying boards and pushing for gender equity at the top of organizations has been a lifelong commitment for Manager.
“Women I mentored ended up on corporate boards. We recently added a third women to the leadership team of Valvoline. I tried to do my part,” Manager says.
His mentees agree.
Pamela Neferkara, Former Vice President, Nike Inc. and Independent Board Director at Hanna Andersson, says, “I view Vada as my ‘board godfather’ because he not only encouraged me to pursue directorships, he has leveraged his network to connect me with opportunities and resources to build my visibility as a board candidate.”
Neferkara adds, “I see Vada as a person of action; he doesn’t just talk about the importance of diversity and parity, he uses his influence to make it happen such as his work in diversifying the board of Valvoline. As I’ve transitioned from operating roles to the boardroom, his advice has been invaluable to me and I continue to count on him as a friend and a mentor,” Neferkara says.
““I see @VadaManager as a person of action; he doesn’t just talk about the importance of #diversity and #parity, he uses his influence to make it happen such as his work in diversifying the board of @Valvoline.” — Pamela Neferkara. ”
“The mandate for boards to be more gender balanced is now on appeal,” Manager says, “but I have always been a half-glass full person. I believe it will prevail and be more commonplace.”
Manager is referring to the move to add women to boards that is measured specifically in the newly released report, Mogul’s Fortune 500 Board Diversity in 2022.
In it Mogul reports on how policymakers are attempting to “to codify an answer to that question. In 2018, California lawmakers enacted SB 8265, which required California-based, publicly held companies to include a minimum number of female directors based on their board size. The bill was overturned in May 2022 after the California Superior Court ruled that SB 826 violated the equal protection clause of the California constitution. Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and Oregon are currently considering diversity quotas that will no doubt be affected by the California ruling.”
The report delivers key findings in a lack of diversity on boards by race and gender identity. “Of 5,403 board members, 69% members are male (3,728) and 31% are female (1,675). Of 5,403 board members, 78.5% members are white (4,240) and 21.5% are non-white (1,163).”
A startling finding is that there are zero Native American men or women on any Fortune 500 board.
The Mogul report continues, “In 1973, only 11 companies in the Fortune 100 had at least one woman. Only 7% had board seats containing at least one ethnic minority. Our analysis shows that today, only one in every four directors (30.89%) in the Fortune 500 is a woman, and 21.38% of directors are an ethnic minority. That’s progress. But at the current pace of minority hires, estimates say we will reach 40% of board seats being held by minorities by 2074.”
And while Manager attests that over the decades he has seen a shift toward gender parity in leadership in this country, there are also some disappointing regressions.
“And while @VadaManager attests that over the decades he has seen a shift toward #genderparity in #leadership in this country, there are also some disappointing regressions. #powerupconference #womensequalityday”
“Yes, some steps forward—women catapulted forward with more women in college, delaying child rearing and more, but now with post-Roe and Dobbs, we have steps backwards,” he says.
“I think the Power Up conference and Gloria’s latest book, (Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone's) Good) help a generation of women who want to understand better how to leverage their power. There has always been power in numbers.”
““I think the #PowerUpConference and @GloriaFeldt ‘s latest book, Intentioning, help a generation of #women who want to understand better how to leverage their power. There has always been power in numbers.” — @VadaManager #powerupconference”
Read more in Take The Lead on Manager featured in panel for Intentioning book launch
For Manager, that powerful move to achieve parity and equity in leadership across all sectors feels personal.
Register here for the 2022 Power Up Concert & Conference: The Big RE: Rethink, Rewire, REcreate
