Artico Search Fills Board Position for Payoneer
May 9, 2023 – Recruiting for boards of directors, considered the backbones of organizations, has grown markedly more challenging, say recruiters who conduct searches in that area. As a result, companies continue to turn to executive search firms to help find new board members. In one recent assignment, Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor of Artico Search placed Sharda Caro Del Castillo as a new member of the board for financial technology company Payoneer. Ms. Caro Del Castillo is a financial services executive with more than 25 years of experience leading both business and legal teams. She is passionate about the intersection of law, technology, financial services, and financial inclusion. Ms. Caro Del Castillo previously served as chief legal officer, chief compliance officer, and corporate secretary at Affirm Inc. Prior to that, she was global head of payments at Airbnb, payments counsel and head of payments platform at Square, and product and regulatory counsel at PayPal, among other roles. Ms. Caro Del Castillo currently serves as a board member for GoFundMe and Forter.
“We are thrilled to welcome Sharda Caro Del Castillo to the Payoneer board of directors and look forward to the deep experience she brings and the value she will add to Payoneer,” said Avi Zeevi, chairman of the board of directors of Payoneer.
“I am honored to join Payoneer’s board of directors at such an exciting time for the company,” said Ms. Caro Del Castillo. “I am looking forward to working alongside our board members and company management to continue to deliver on the Payoneer mission of providing a financial operating account for entrepreneurs and businesses around the world to do business across borders.”
Related: How to Approach Strategic Board Succession Planning
Based in New York City, Payoneer is the financial technology company empowering small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to transact, do business, and grow globally. The company was founded in 2005 with the mission to enable any business and entrepreneurs anywhere to participate and succeed in the global digital economy.
Proven Search Consultants
With offices in San Francisco, New York, and Austin, TX, Artico is off to one of the fastest starts among boutique search firms in recent memory. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor co-founded Artico with Matt Comyns, a cybersecurity leadership expert, to lead the firm’s rapidly expanding growth executive search team. Given the billions of dollars flowing into venture capital and private equity investments these days, as well as the ever-present threat of cybersecurity breaches, the founders expect big growth acceleration ahead. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor has completed over 75 CEO searches as well as partner, principal, and other CXO level assignments.
Breaking the Boardroom Glass Ceiling
For far too long, leadership positions have been less accessible for women than their male peers. This has resulted in frustrating gender imbalances across organizations’ top ranks globally—seven percent of the world’s largest companies still have all-male boards, and only 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. But despite longstanding barriers, female leadership is on the rise, according Egon Zehnder’s Global Board Diversity Tracker 2022-2023 (GBDT). At the board level, there has been steady investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion, with one in three new hires being women and 27 percent of board seats being held by female directors globally. This is the fastest pace of progress the search firm has seen since tracking these stats.
Ms. Chatfield-Taylor’s team focuses on executive-level search for scaleup venture capital and private equity-backed technology companies. The team has deep expertise in global enterprise software, data and consumer internet businesses. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor is deeply passionate about the importance of diversifying the industry, with a full 53 percent of her placements tracked since 2019 being underrepresented executives.
Luring Directors
According to Egon Zehnder, heightened expectations now placed on boards have elevated both the professional standards and personal commitment required of all directors.
At the same time, many boards find that the supply of independent-minded “board experienced” directors – especially those who can add vital forms of specialized skills and expertise – is limited. Such candidates are widely sought but can be hesitant to take on the intensive responsibilities now required of board service.
Most in demand are women, senior leaders with global experience, ethnically diverse professionals, and millennials.
Related: U.S. Boards Seen as Slowly Evolving
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
