Spotlight On: Barbara Hayes, Executive Director, The Boston Club
August 2024 — Barbara Hayes, executive director of The Boston Club, talked to Invest: about how the nonprofit was created to advance women’s leadership across corporate, nonprofit, and community sectors, the importance that it places on female corporate leadership at the highest tiers, and the programming that it offers to its more than 400 members.
What are the core guiding principles of The Boston Club’s work in Greater Boston?
Our mission is delivering demonstrable impact for all women to tables that matter in corporate and community life. As a nonprofit, we are a membership association that focuses on delivering impact – both for our members and in the broader ecosystem. We provide programming opportunities for networking, connecting, mentorship, and professional learning to help our members advance professionally and personally in the ways that are important to them.
The Boston Club has over 400 members across many sectors, and our membership tends to be in the medium-high to senior level women who are actively engaged in advancing their professional journeys. Many members also stay through into their retirement or join in their retirement because they have insights from their years of experience, as well as time to give back. Our members care deeply about delivering impact for women individually and out in the broader community.
How did The Boston Club come to be and how has the organization grown in Greater Boston?
We were founded in 1976 by a small group of courageous women who had the audacious idea of having a business lunch together. I have heard a few different versions of the specifics of our origin story, but the general story arc is as follows: These women could not find a restaurant that catered to business clientele that would serve them because business lunch establishments in Boston were men-only at that time. Not happy with that idea, they made a reservation at one of the leading restaurants, brought their friend who was a Boston Globe reporter, with the intention of taking their seats at their reserved table. When they were told that they could not be seated because they were not men, they suggested that they be allowed to have lunch there or they might need to have an in-depth conversation with the reporter about that situation in Boston. The rest is history.
The Boston Club takes great pride in our roots and are committed to living up to the legacy of these courageous women. We are not only focused on helping our members, but also deeply committed to changing the professional atmosphere for women in all networks and sectors in the Greater Boston area. A silver lining of COVID-19 is that thanks to our expanded online programming, our membership is now growing beyond Boston. With our fast-growing membership in New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island, we are Boston-based but have a New England reach.
What are the most important growth milestones that The Boston Club reached in the past year?
It has been a busy year with many proud moments. It was not always smooth and easy, but we got through them. I joined The Boston Club as executive director at the end June 2023. The Boston Club’s board of directors had been working for many years on a new governance and organizational structure. The big milestone was implementing and activating a new structure that sets our board up as a fiduciary body that provides oversight and a long term mission-driven vision. I was hired with a new vision for an executive director role with CEO-level responsibility for strategic implementation of the board’s vision. I have been charged with growing the Club and enhancing our members’ experience, including building our programs and deepening our thought leadership on issues important to women’s professional and personal journeys.
In our early days, we were a fully volunteer-driven organization, run by our members. Everything we did was led by people who volunteered to create a program, event, or service. That model wasn’t sufficient to keep pace with TBC’s exciting evolution and growth over time, so staff was added and our administrative function continues to evolve. The board eventually decided that our organizational structure was holding us back, so new bylaws were presented to the full TBC membership for approval in the spring of 2023. Those bylaws paved the way for envisioning a new role for our board and elevated the role of our administrative structure.
How has the change in those bylaws impacted The Boston Club at the organizational level?
Those bylaws have led to significant organizational and cultural change. As always, The Boston Club punches way above its weight. We are a small and lean administrative team that draws enormous strength from the energy and dedication of our members to provide extraordinary programming throughout the year. Our members have a passion for helping other women and bringing their knowledge, experience, and expertise to the table for them.
Those bylaws also envisioned the formation of a Leadership Council composed of member volunteers to operate as an advisory group for me. This council represents all the major working group areas of the club, and is an exciting starting point for our conversation around our program priorities and delivery, and how to align them with the broader vision set out by our board. Our new administrative team and I have reimagined and redesigned all our digital platforms as well – including launching a new website and member portal. We also now have an intranet system that helps activate and elevate our member-to-member connections.
These changes have also set into place a broader vision for exciting collaborations and partnerships to extend and deepen our programming. These include new ways of engaging with colleague organizations as well as new, exciting opportunities for building alliances through our expanded corporate sponsorships, especially through our new program – TBC’s Women’s Leadership Alliance.
What are the trends that are impacting women in business in the Greater Boston region?
Because of our club’s history and who our membership is, we embrace the idea that top leadership drives true change and that women bring unique leadership perspectives from whatever seats they are in, across professional sectors and communities. We are an inclusive and diverse membership organization for top leaders and for all women on professional pathways. Elevating and embracing allyship is also an important value for us. Without the buy-in and active support of leaders of all genders across business sectors and in our community, change for women from all communities will never happen. We have been trying to walk that walk through our mission, vision, and values – internally through our programming and membership culture and externally through our thought leadership in the broader professional ecosystem.
The Boston Club’s primary focus has long been on changing our concept of what leadership is — who is seen as a leader, as well as advancing our understanding of the vital importance of women’s leadership as a force for driving innovation and business success. Our tagline ‘Advancing Women Leaders’ says it all.
The Boston Club is well-known for preparing and placing women on corporate boards, a reputation that has been built over many decades. We now also have a leadership presence in a growing national network in this area – a vital role for us to play since there has always been a bit of a secret society approach on how to even be considered for, much less placed in, those rare, high-value seats. People often speak about the importance of building the pipeline for these top seats. But the truth is that the top leadership pipeline is already over-flowing with highly qualified, talented women. This is not a supply problem. It is about demand – who is seen as being a leader. Here at The Boston Club, we are focused on empowering the women in the leadership pipeline and making their presence and value known.
What advocacy efforts is The Boston Club using to create a business environment that is more favorable to all women?
This is an important growth area for us as we build upon our past work and long, strong reputation. For 22 years, The Boston Club has produced an annual research report in partnership with Bentley University, the Census of Women Directors and Executive Officers of Massachusetts Public Companies. Through this seminal work, we underscore the importance of publicly accessible data — being able to count and measure phenomena – to effectively drive meaningful change. We are proud of our public voice on key issues for women’s leadership through our Census, as well as through advocacy letters to the SEC regarding requirement reporting on gender and diversity data and our State House testimony on the importance of childcare and other family-friendly practices for women in business.
Going forward, we want to do even more to elevate our voice in key conversations related to women’s advancement. We are thrilled to have recently welcomed our most diverse board of directors ever and look forward to our future directions in this important conversation under their leadership.
What are the key opportunities that you have identified in Greater Boston’s business sector?
Our fastest growing membership group is in life sciences and healthcare, which is no surprise here in Boston. We are also seeing a strong interest in the innovation sector – early-stage/venture capital. We have exciting partnerships forming there and are excited to collaborate with others to move the needle on investments by women investors for women entrepreneurs. We launched initial programming in this area in the spring that was highly popular, so there will be more to come.
Moreover, as big a sector as it is in Boston, tech is probably the most stubbornly unchanging one in terms of women’s participation. There have been few women in the technology ‘inventors’ pool. With the advent of Generative AI, there are exciting opportunities as greater numbers of women assume leadership roles in this space. Applications for Gen AI is an area that we will be diving into, especially for driving the conversation on Gen AI for Social Good. We are actively looking at what we can do as a club to move the conversation forward on how bringing the voices of women and diverse communities will change the storyline and drive innovation in that sector.
What are the determining factors that make Boston a great place to do business, especially for women?
I believe we are in a Golden Age for women in Boston. We have a woman governor, a woman mayor, and a woman attorney general as well as many women top leaders in higher ed, hospitals, and elsewhere. These amazing leaders are changing the tenor of the Greater Boston community in ways that we are only beginning to understand and experience. I know I’m biased, having spent most of my adult life here, but Boston is a very special community. Across all business sectors, the region’s innovation economy, healthcare, life sciences, technology, you name it, Boston is fueled by our extraordinary higher ed institutions. The value that the Boston community places on education, research, and innovation provides an unmatched spark and quality of experience.
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