Meet the only Black woman board chair in the Fortune 500 | Fortune
How many Fortune 500 companies do you think have a Black woman as their board chair? The answer: just one.
Lynn Crump-Caine became chair of the board of the financial services firm Thrivent at the beginning of this year. A 30-year alum of McDonald’s, she had served on Thrivent’s board for a decade before being elevated to chair in January. And she already has a wealth of experience as chair of other organizations: she’s also chair of the board at the fast-food chain Wingstop, which is a public company (but not part of the Fortune 500), and she has chaired the nonprofit Advocate Health Care.
Crump-Caine joined a rarified group. Even more so than Black female Fortune 500 CEOs, Black female board chairs are exceedingly rare. Ursula Burns, who became the first Black woman to run a Fortune 500 company when she took over Xerox, also served as the company’s chair. When Mellody Hobson became chair of the board at Starbucks in 2021, she was the only Black woman chairing a Fortune 500 company. (Hobson stepped down as chair in 2024 and left the Starbucks board the next year.)
Across the Russell 3000, women of color held 7.3% of board seats in the first quarter of this year, 50/50 Women on Boards reported. As of tomorrow, the Fortune 500 will have three Black female CEOs when Karen S. Carter officially takes over Dow.
“People generally, in my opinion, have a little reticence or fear or concern for things they haven’t seen before,” Crump-Caine told me. “Through Thrivent and my role, I’m hoping we’ll demonstrate that it’s a risk worth taking.”
Crump-Caine is working alongside Thrivent CEO Terry Rasmussen, who is one of the 50-odd female CEOs in the Fortune 500. That means they’re also a rare female CEO-chair duo in the Fortune 500. Rasmussen describes Crump-Caine as a mentor, and says she’s helped her as she modernizes the business. Thrivent is a more than century-old, Lutheran-founded financial services company. With $212 billion in assets under management and almost $11.2 billion in revenue, it ranked No. 387 on this year’s Fortune 500.
Crump-Caine describes the role of board chair as helping the CEO “see around corners” and deliver on their vision and strategy. From her time at McDonald’s, where she ran operations for more than 30,000 restaurants around the world, she says she brings with her a devotion to the customer or client, a way of thinking about complex problems, and skill at managing a variety of stakeholders. “I learned discipline and prioritization, just as we are doing now,” she says.
To other women interested in taking up board service—whether dipping their toe in, or full-time as Crump-Caine does—she advises them to make sure they’re ready. “Timing matters,” she says. “You have to spend enough time in an executive role to understand what value you could bring.”
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