California outlawed the all-white-male boardroom. That move is reshaping corporate America

When Dr. Maria Rivas joined the board of a medical tech firm called Medidata a few years ago, she was a novelty: The company had never had a woman in that role.

Medidata was no outlier. Rivas, chief medical officer at Merck, had impressive credentials when she breached the rarefied world of boardrooms in 2018, but much of corporate America wasn’t looking for candidates like her. “It is unfortunately comfortable for humans to go with people who look like they do,” Rivas said.

For hundreds of public companies, that meant filling boards exclusively from their networks of familiar faces — typically white men.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.