Merline Saintil
Co-founder, Black Women on Boards; Lead Director of Rocket Lab, A Space Exploration Company
SPEAKER FEE RANGE: $62,000–$70,000 [FEE NOTE]
TRAVELS FROM: California
Merline Saintil is the Lead Director of Rocket Lab, a space exploration leader. Her role at this public company is a distinction held by only a handful of Black women in the world. From her humble beginnings in Haiti, she would stumble upon computer science in college and later discover a passion for both product and technology. She earned a Carnegie Mellon master's degree and ultimately became a Silicon Valley COO. "The trajectory of my career and lift in one generation is improbable," she says, "but it's not impossible." She authors a monthly newsletter, Lifting As We Climb, in which she interviews leading minds and has meaningful conversations with her friends and colleagues (VCs, CEOs, board members, founders, CXOs, and more) focused on a centralized theme around leadership principles. Merline is a long-time angel investor, helping fuel the early success of more than 40 innovative startups and is now expanding further by starting a $50 million fund. She enjoys advising CEOs and founders and in 2022 Fortune celebrated the scope of her influence by naming her one of the Most Powerful Women in business.
Merline Saintil – a software engineer turned Silicon Valley COO and investor who has taken six companies through their IPOs – is an active investor in dozens of companies that are shaping the future of work, e-commerce and technology.
A frequent featured speaker and with her perspectives quoted in major publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes, Merline is now starting a $50M fund that invests in early stage management teams.
She is a Fortune 500 board member and co-founder of Black Women on Boards, a global organization of 200 executives at market-leading companies who help prepare, place and propel Black top talent into boardrooms of the most innovative companies.
Her Carnegie Mellon master’s degree in software engineering serves her well as lead independent director of Rocket Lab. She also advises the C-suite as a board member and committee chair at GitLab, Symbotic, Lightspeed Commerce, and TD Synnex.
Away from cap tables and quarterly meetings, Merline is a passionate fan of the Stanford Women’s Soccer team, which conveniently plays home games near her office in Palo Alto and which includes her daughter, an equally ardent student of computer science.
A frequent featured speaker and with her perspectives quoted in major publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes, Merline is now starting a $50M fund that invests in early stage management teams.
She is a Fortune 500 board member and co-founder of Black Women on Boards, a global organization of 200 executives at market-leading companies who help prepare, place and propel Black top talent into boardrooms of the most innovative companies.
Her Carnegie Mellon master’s degree in software engineering serves her well as lead independent director of Rocket Lab. She also advises the C-suite as a board member and committee chair at GitLab, Symbotic, Lightspeed Commerce, and TD Synnex.
Away from cap tables and quarterly meetings, Merline is a passionate fan of the Stanford Women’s Soccer team, which conveniently plays home games near her office in Palo Alto and which includes her daughter, an equally ardent student of computer science.
Board Governance
This session will review the latest trends on key issues facing compensation committees, including the current practices on tying pay to performance; the shifting focus of incentive pay from traditional performance metrics to emphasize other key strategic initiatives, such as meeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives; best practices for compensation committee process; clawback provisions; and the
changing opinions (and power) of institutional investors and others on matters of executive compensation.Creating Generational Wealth
Technology Trends
The Board’s Changing Role in Cyber, Risk, and Strategy
Future of Work
Creating Generational Wealth
Battle for Tech Talent
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