Behind the Scenes of the Board (Nationwide Diversity) Recruitment Process

Part One – The need, desire and challenge

Companies across the nation turn to Cardinal Board Services for recruiting board members. While the board recruitment process isn’t necessarily easy, it is important for a company’s governance.

In this three-part series, we look at Cardinal Board Services’ work with Ryan Companies, a 75-year-old private family construction and commercial real estate development business (www.ryancompanies.com) based in Minneapolis.  

While Ryan Companies has a rich history in Minnesota – including the building of one of the first Target stores in 1966 & being named the 2007 NAIOP National Developer of the Year – the company has grown over the years and now has a national presence with multiple offices and operations across the U.S. Ryan Companies foresight and strong corporate governance helped the company survive the Great Recession and positioned them for incredible growth and success.  

The company’s board, however, had not shifted with the company’s expanded national focus. Board members had been in place for years, with a total of five independent outside directors and four internal owners/members. The Ryan Companies board comprised long-standing members who were locally connected to either the company or to the family ownership.

With the Great Recession in the past, Ryan Companies looked to the future and how best to address the changes in the construction and real estate development industry. Ryan itself experienced changes ranging from the national scope of their projects to challenges in raising capital for large opportunities to the increasing complexity of becoming a large company with an growing number of stakeholders.

Ryan Companies looked to Cardinal Board Services for assistance in recruiting new board members – with a qualification that at least one needed to be different than any of the current board members.

Next up in the series is Part Two – The Search for a New and Different Board Member.

For more information about how the board recruiting process works in a search for your next board member please call or click here.