People: 2018Q2

Abby Cowart has resigned as Executive Director of the Shareholder Services Association (SSA) as of June 13, 2018, after a highly successful three-year tenure, marked by the launch of a Certification Program for Shareholder Relations Professionals and vigorous new growth in the membership. The Board will fulfill the Executive Director responsibilities until a replacement is announced. Abby will join Computershare in Louisville, KY as a Project Manager. Warmest congratulations to Abby - and to Computershare, which has added a new and true industry star to its roster.

The New York Stock Exchange is being run by a woman for the first time in its 226-year history after Stacey Cunningham, who had been the exchange’s chief operating officer, assumed the role in May. Cunningham, who started as a floor clerk at the exchange in 1996 clearly knows the ropes from the ground up, and we wish her every success at a very difficult time for traditional stock exchanges. (For you history buffs, Catherine Kinney became the NYSE’s first woman co-president in 2002, but, as a CNNMoney article noted, that was at a time when the exchange’s CEO or chairman, rather than the President, was the ultimate boss.)
Industry veteran Robert Durham, has signed on as a Financial Print/Communications Consultant at RJD CONSULTING, LLC in NYC - continuing an incredibly varied career in the constantly evolving financial printing business. Robert spent 13 years with MICR Encoding, back when the business of designing and printing custom dividend and interest checks and imprinting MICR numbers on them was a huge one…until suddenly it was not, thanks to new technologies that could create and print checks at the press of a button. (Back then, “custom dividend checks” often cost more than $.25 each!) Seeing the handwriting on the wall, he moved on to help start Image Group as a division of proxy solicitor Corporate Investor Communications aka CIC (not to be confused with “the other CIC” - a contemporaneous company that specialized in reorg jobs that the founders said stood, aptly we thought, for “Catholics in Chaos.”) Then, following the sale of proxy solicitor CIC and its Image Group to Computershare, Robert moved on to D.F. King - to jumpstart their newly formed kcomm printing unit, and from there, when family-held DF King was sold, he moved on to jumpstart the AST Document Solutions unit. A story for our History section, if ever there was one!

Mark Kopelman joined Computershare in May as an EVP in the Mid-Market segment of their US Issuer Services Group, following an eight-month stint as CEO at and an investor in market research firm Group Five.  Prior to that, Mark spent 5+ years at Broadridge, where he led their entry into the Transfer Agency Market, and prior to that, Mark spent 18 years at RR Donnelley where he held leadership positions in marketing, strategy, sales, strategic pricing and operations.

Ann Mule, Associate Director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at Univeristy of Delaware, and a former Corporate Secretary and Governance officer, was recognized as a “Giant of the Business Bar” in the field of corporate governance by the Business Law Section of the Philadelphia Bar Association in June. Very well deserved!

Anne Simpson, who oversees sustainable investments and investor initiatives at CalPERS and Tim Smith, the Director of ESG Shareowner Engagement at Walden Asset Management (whom your editor in chief has known since the 1970s when he led the world-changing anti-aparthei

d voting initiatives at U.S. shareholder meetings) have been named by Barron’s magazine, and also reprinted as a special supplement in the WSJ, as being among the “Twenty Most Influential People in ESG”…joining such notables as Michael Bloomberg and Larry Fink of BlackRock, “the world’s largest asset manager.” Heartiest congratulations on this well-deserved recognition!  

Recently retired Computershare EVP, Joe Spadaford who earned Six Sigma Master Black Belt status, while at AXA Equitable is now the President of J Francis Consulting in Chester Springs, PA, where he will serve as an executive consultant to mid-to-large-scale firms in the areas of team development, optimizing efficiency and productivity, guiding cost effective organizational transformation, provide guidance in establishing a viable succession strategy for businesses that will achieve long-term business objectives and guide initiatives to identify, develop, and mentor new leadership talent. No surprise to us, or to anyone who knows Joe, the business is off to a very fast start.

Kristina Veaco, who, in 2006, founded the Veaco Group - a much-admired corporate governance consulting firm - and who also serves on the CT Hagberg LLC Team of Inspectors of Election - since 2007 - received a lifetime achievement award - the “Wow Award” - for her work in corporate governance at Broc Romanek‘s “Women’s 100 Conference” in Palo Alto in June.