Third Ascend Pinnacle Asian Corporate Directors Summit Scheduled in New York

Ascend Pinnacle, with its Founding Partner, Deloitte, join forces to increase number of Asian corporate board members

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Mar 19, 2019, 08:48 ET

NEW YORK, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascend Pinnacle's third Asian Corporate Directors Summit will be held March 22–24, 2019 at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Westchester. The by-invitation event is the largest gathering of Asian American experienced corporate directors and aspiring directors. Deloitte is the Summit founding partner, and event sponsors include Archegos Capital Management, Equilar, Southwest Airlines and TPG.

Attendees at the Ascend Pinnacle Asian Corporate Directors Summit

The goal of the Summit is to provide a platform to share and educate, increase the dialogue and facilitate trusted conversations around strategic boardroom issues. This year's theme "Building on the Best" speaks to the focus on building the pipeline of future leaders as we look to increase Pan-Asians on corporate boards through the Aspiring Directors Academy ("ADA") for which EY is the lead sponsor. The ADA is part of an expanded year-long, cohort based program Ascend Pinnacle has developed.

Ascend Pinnacle, the only network of its kind, focuses on Asian American directors on US public company and large private company boards and launched with a simple goal: increase the number of Asian Americans on public company boards. Asians are the least likely to be promoted to managerial or executive positions, despite being the largest minority group of professionals and the most likely to be hired. Asian women made progress in 2018 in gaining Fortune 500 board director seats, but white men still hold 66% of all Fortune 500 board seats and 91.1% of chairmanships on these boards.

"Every year we see more dialogue around the importance of diverse boards and actions taken for businesses to gain competitive advantage through diversity of thought, experiences and viewpoints (proven many times over)," said Anna W. Mok, Co-Founder, Ascend Pinnacle; President Elect, Ascend and Partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP. "Currently, Asians (including Asian Americans and all Asians) occupy less than 4 percent of the nearly 5,700 Fortune 500 board director seats. One key goal is to disrupt the traditional board recruitment process and for businesses to really focus on diversity and inclusion as a key business imperative."

"At Ascend Pinnacle, we are so proud of our work to increase the number of Asians on corporate boards and build a robust pipeline of future board leaders. We've seen an increased interest by well-qualified attendees for the Aspiring Directors Academy as well as an increase in inquiries for diverse director candidate referrals, which is further testament to the critical importance of these initiatives," said Janet S. Wong, Lead Executive Advisor, Ascend Pinnacle and Independent Board Director, Enviva Partners.

In addition to celebrating the potential of Ascend Pinnacle's aspiring directors, Ascend will recognize recently retired S. K. Gupta, co-founder of Ascend Pinnacle.

About Ascend

Ascend is the largest, non-profit Pan-Asian membership organization for business professionals in North America. Established in 2005, Ascend, a career lifecycle organization, reaches 60,000+ senior executives, professionals, and MBA/undergraduate students involved in its 50+ chapters in the United States and Canada. Visit http://www.ascendleadership.org/ for more information.

Media contact:
Sofia Poyhonen
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SOURCE Ascend