After Walkout Over Company Racism, Pinterest Adds Its First Black Board Member
Andrea Wishom of Skywalker Holdings joins Pinterest’s overwhelmingly white board of directors
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Pinterest announced it was adding Andrea Wishom, president at Skywalker Holdings and former executive vice president at Harpo Productions, to its board of directors on Monday. The addition of Wishom, who is a Black woman, comes three days after Pinterest employees staged a virtual walkout over racial discrimination and retaliation at the company.
“I want to thank the entire Pinterest board for this opportunity,” Wishom said in a statement on Monday. “In this unprecedented moment in time, I’m excited to join the board of a global company that has provided exploration and inspiration to so many, including myself.”
Wishom is the third woman on Pinterst’s board of directors and its first Black member. The board is currently composed of Jeffrey Jordan, formerly a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Leslie J. Kilgore, a director at Netflix; Jeremy S. Levine, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners; Gokul Rajaram, Caviar lead at DoorDash; Frederic G. Reynolds, director of Mondelez International, Inc. and United Technologies Corporation; Evan Sharp, Pinterest co-founder and chief design and creative officer; Ben Silbermann, Pinterest co-founder and CEO; and Michelle Wilson, formerly senior vice president at Amazon.
A spokesperson for Pinterest said that the addition of Wishom was not a response to Friday’s walkout, saying “the board has been speaking with many candidates over the past few months. This appointment is focused on Andrea’s expertise and what she can bring to Pinterest, and not in response to any specific events.”
At Skywalker Holdings, Wishom oversees operations at the privately held property management company affiliated with George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch. At Harpo Productions, where Wishom worked for more than 20 years, she held various production, programming…
