Elon Musk appears to be heeding the call of a group of disgruntled investors by bringing two new members onto Tesla’s board. One of them happens to be a black woman.
In an announcement Monday, the Tesla CEO named Johnson Publishing Co. CEO Linda Johnson Rice as an independent director on Tesla’s board. Johnson Rice is the first African American and second woman to join the board, which until now included five people with either personal or professional ties to Musk.
Forbes reports that the move comes after a year of criticism by some shareholders that Tesla’s board was too insular, and calls for two outside board members to fix “underlying governance deficiencies.” The electric-car and solar manufacturing company has seen its stock price decline after a report that a Tesla electric vehicle crashed in Minnesota after the driver engaged its Autopilot semi-automated driving system.
“Linda has extensive corporate board experience, having previously served on the boards of a number of companies across a variety of industries, including Bausch & Lomb, Continental Bank, Quaker Oats, Dial Corporation, MoneyGram and Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and currently serving on the boards of Omnicom Group and Grubhub,” Tesla said in a statement Monday. She also works with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Public Library Board of Directors and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The other new member, James Murdoch, CEO of 21st Century Fox, is also the youngest son of Rupert Murdoch, who founded a media empire that includes movie studios, newspapers, TV networks and more.
Read more at Forbes.