”No Kim, you don’t understand: Never, ever should a marketer be on a board.”
Kimberly Whitler remembers having to keep herself from shaking with anger when she heard this response. The comment came from a European businessman she was interviewing, she says, a man who had sat on many boards over the years, mostly in manufacturing. She found his opinion dogmatic and short-sighted. “It just didn’t make sense to me,” she says.
Whitler calmed herself. “Help me understand,” she remembers saying, “what is it that makes you think that marketers are never valuable on the board.”