Our story this month is about the passion of our Over the Edge person of the month, Lissa Broome, Founder of the Director Diversity Initiative. We’ll learn how her infectious intent to change the status quo drives her daily world and how the power of women can be so strong that when laser focused on changing something (anything!) for the better it feels less of an ominous chore.   How do you simplify an overwhelming need for big change?  By incorporating these principles:  simplification, passion, focus, collaboration and INTENT! 

*The Story of the Month:  Lissa Broome, UNC’s Wachovia Professor of Banking Law and Director of Center for Banking and Finance &  Director Diversity Initiative UNC School of Law*

 Passion for Change + Intent Leads to ….. Well….. CHANGE of Course!

The wonderful thing about writing this column is meeting incredible women, like Lissa Broome (pronounced Lisa), Director of the Director Diversity Initiative at UNC’s School of Law. The objective of the Initiative is to encourage boards of directors of public companies to increase their gender, racial, and ethnic diversity. 

 Lissa’s endearing modesty almost glosses over her power packed, into-action, mission for changing the status quo.  The positive effects are much more far reaching than just the obvious stated mission for The Diversity Director Initiative.  Just a few of the indirect effects could have greater impacts than one could imagine,  like incoming opportunities at the highest executive levels for women.  The Diversity Initiative is focused on the diversification of boards of directors with a direct mission is to improve the success, the ethics and the quality of long term sustainable growth to the benefit of public corporation’s  shareholders, customers and employees.  However, dive a little deeper and one can see a few of the indirect effects. One that comes to my mind is women supporting women over time will eventually dissolve the artificial glass ceiling  while also allowing women stronger platform to impact the world in positive ways.    Keeping in mind that women are not the only focus of the diversification effort another indirect effect of diversification of boards is a simple lesson, when engaging a diverse set of unique minds in one room the collective of minds introduces new ways of thinking, new ways of acting and possibly stronger checks and balances to any system.    So what does it take to break through a seemingly concrete system?   Incredible patience, diligence, a strong cheerleading squad of support, understanding of how to leverage your resources to the fullest and certainly an enormous amount of passion with intent to make this change a reality over time.

Lissa is a master at leveraging her resources and recognizes the role as a professor of law at UNC allows her a certain flexibility to dive into research and writing, putting to work the great talent of the students and networking outside of UNC.  These actions allow her and her team to create the re-enforcing data, case studies and program development for corporations seeking to diversify their boards and to those seeking a Board position.    Lissa is quick to note “change and improvement can seem painfully slow especially the first few years.  Patience, perseverance and daily steps are keys to success!   We will continue to act the same, think the same and get more of THE SAME unless we are willing to push for change!”    

The Mom, the Wife, the Professional and the Sports Fanatic.. HOW DO YOU DO IT?

How does she handle teaching, leading two major UNC law department initiatives, writing books, researching and mentoring as well as being a wife and mother of a school age daughter? Like many Women’s Edge readers, Lissa strives for the balanced living.  I ask her this question as it is always top of mind for me as a mom, wife and professional myself. I am always curious as to how others manage their lives.  Without even thinking, Lissa’s jets out “I have a very supportive husband!” She follows this with “HIRE SMART and have good help around you always.” She has a wonderful housekeeper and as fortune would have it, Lissa’s able to leverage law students in various capacities to do work or even babysit on occasion.  “The students get money  to fund nights out and my husband and I get nights out,” Lissa points out.   Great leveraging of resources! Lissa, a former Chair of the UNC Faculty Athletics Committee  that is advisory to the Chancellor, includes UNC  women & men’s basketball as mother & daughter activities. She is a Tar Heel zealot on the way to raising another one.  Her own mother was also a big fan.  Sounds like passion meets passion in the stands not just in the Broome household. 

 Her husband, Adam Broome, is General Counsel of a local large business in the Triangle area and  is an private pilot for fun and recently took up aerobatic  flying. They love to fly on trips together, travel being another one of Lissa’s passions.  An academic career has fueled her interests in so many areas and has also afforded her the flexibility to live life balanced while conducting such meaningful work. 

Passion +Perseverance = Success in Due Time

Lissa is changing the status quo. She is redesigning concrete historical monuments slowly, methodically with perseverance, focus, collaboration, intent and passion.  We can all learn lessons on change from Lissa.  No matter what your educational background (and Lissa’s is Harvard Law, graduating cum laude by the way and I had to look up how to spell cum laude!) change is not an easy task.  “Much of the time in the early stages of a startup initiative it can feel like the general population only loves you when your initiatives show signs of success and but  ignore your efforts until these successes become visible.”  Lissa notes.   The Diversity Initiative is just a few years into it and has had some successes to taut although Lissa is not taking any breather time as this mission is too important to celebrate these successes just yet. 

We’re sipping our morning coffee which has been staring at me for an hour now and I can see the intensity in Lissa’s eyes heat up as she begins to share important points for her purposeful movement.  She notes that too many Fortune companies have just the one token diversity addition not realizing the real power in truly shaking up the look of the table.  “And there is much work to do to prepare individuals that are potentially great candidates for board positions.  The work is twofold; educating corporations on why this initiative is imperative to their success and preparing individuals for board seats. ” she states the goals in such a way that you just want to march right in and sign up to help her!   Many women and diverse individuals are not prepared for board positions.  Training, networking, building up a board ready resume and experience are all very important.  The Diversity Initiative is not only training and educating but also collecting the data of those individuals ready for board seats.  The Diversity Initiative database is a searchable data base of ready talent for corporations.  “We’ve had a number of wonderful successes in the past two years, but this database needs to be filled with many more talented individuals,”   Lissa says as we finish our coffee. “Corporation’s boards are aging, retirements are expected to surge over the next few years and new talent will be highly sought after to fill these positions.  It is a wonderful time for individuals to step up and take action if they are interested.”    She invites Women’s Edge readers to register on the database and to consider attending the Diversity Initiatives next program, Broadening Corporate Board Diversity: Earning a Board Seat on May 19^th, 2008 in Chapel Hill, NC.

Lissa is Over the Edge in her efforts to impact change on corporate boards!  Her energy level is a competitive match to her college students, her passion for change is to be admired and the effects of her efforts will have amazing impacts on the world over the long term.  She has passion, she is intent on making a difference, small steps are being made every day toward her big juicy vision and there is no doubt in my mind she will succeed in her mission.  To learn more about Diversity Director Initiative and Lissa Broome visit http://www.law.unc.edu/centers/banking/diversity/default.aspx. 

Email me your comments at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , I would love to hear from my readers concerning any of the Over the Edge past stories. Better yet share with me your ideas on future stories.  Also, you may visit my blog at www.cladventures.com.  See you in February!