The Struggle for Women in the Boardroom

When Mellody Hobson sat with her six fellow DreamWorks Animation board members at a screening of the company's Megamind before it was released in October 2010, something struck her — and only her — immediately: There was no nonwhite character in the film other than an alien, and he was blue.
Hobson, who had joined the DWA board in 2004 and became its chairman in October 2012, spoke up in front of the group. "I said, 'Where are the people of color?' This was set in a major city in the United States. I said, 'How can this be?' " DWA founder Jeffrey Katzenberg was so struck by her remarks that after Hobson had returned to her home in Chicago, he asked her to come back to Los Angeles. Over lunch at The Grill, he promised the company never again would make such a mistake. Recalls Hobson, "He said, 'I just didn't see it.' That's the point, right?"
The point being that diversity on corporate boards brings fresh insights, as Hobson, 46, president of Ariel Investments, demonstrated. DWA's most recent movie, Home , also features an alien, but the main human character is a girl of color, voiced by Rihanna. The film grossed $386 million worldwide, and Katzenberg received moving letters of appreciation from parents happy to see a nonwhite character taking a central role. The only woman and person of color on the board, Hobson "has been an invaluable advocate for diversity and representation among our employees, our leadership and in our movies themselves, and she does it in a graceful and gracious way," says Katzenberg. "Our audience is global and diverse. The people who make our product ought to be representative of who our audience is."