QUALCOMM ADDS 2 NEW DIRECTORS, BOOSTS DIVERSITY

Ex-Girl Scouts chief Acevedo, Intuit Executive Vice President Johnson appointed to board

Qualcomm boosted the diversity of its board of directors this week by appointing two new directors — former head of Girls Scouts of the USA Sylvia Acevedo and Intuit Executive Vice President Greg Johnson.

The appointments give San Diego-based Qualcomm 13 board members, up from 11 previously. Both Acevedo and Johnson will join the board now and stand for election by shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in March.

Qualcomm’s corporate directors were sued in July by two stockholders who allege they failed to bring Blacks onto the board or into top executive roles while repeatedly touting diversity efforts in public statements.

The shareholder lawsuits came in the

wake of protests over racial inequality. The pending cases were brought by La Jolla law firm Bottini & Bottini, which filed similar legal actions against Facebook and Oracle.

Acevedo served as chief executive of Girl Scouts of the USA from 2017 through August. Before that, she sat on the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, with a focus on educational policy around dual language in early childhood.

She began her career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she worked on the Voyager 2 project. She also held senior positions with IBM, Apple and Dell during her career.

Acevedo earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in industrial engineering from New Mexico State and Stanford, respectively.

Johnson has been executive vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Consumer Group since 2018. Before that, he worked as a senior vice president at Intuit — the maker of TurboTax, QuickBooks and other business/financial software — since 2012.

Johnson previously held marketing positions at Advance Auto Parts, Best Buy, Gillette, Eastman Kodak, S.C. Johnson, Motorola and Kraft Foods during his career .

graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he was a two-time all-conference football player, Johnson earned a degree in operations research.

Acevedo will join Qualcomm’s governance committee and Johnson will serve on the human resources and compensation committee.

“We welcome Sylvia and Greg and look forward to bringing their knowledge, experiences and broad perspectives to the Qualcomm Board of Directors as we continue to lead the 5G transition and execute on the large opportunities ahead of the Company,” said Mark McLaughlin, board chairman, in a statement.

Francis Bottini Jr., the lawyer for shareholders, applauded the appointments of Acevedo and Johnson. But he added that doesn’t change the legal issues underpinning the lawsuits and falls short of the remedies sought, which include the appointment of a second Black board member, firing the company’s chief diversity officer and creating an $800 million fund to hire and promote minorities into management positions.