The Board of Directors of Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE: WDR) has added two business veterans to its ranks, bringing added expertise and an enhanced diversity of perspective to the Board. Appointed to the Board this month were:
- Katherine M.A. (“Allie”) Kline, former chief marketing and communications officer for Oath Inc. (now Verizon Media), a Verizon Communications, Inc. subsidiary consisting of more than 20 distinctive digital brands, including AOL, HuffPost, Techcrunch and Yahoo. With more than 25 years of business, branding and marketing experience, she has been an entrepreneur and has also held leadership and marketing roles at 33Across, Unicast (now Amazon), InterVU (now Akamai) and the Washington Wizards.
- Constance (“Connie”) K. Weaver, Co-founder and chief executive officer of Tracker Group LLC. She has 35 years of experience as a C-suite executive building and leading award-winning organizations in marketing, communications and investor relations across a variety of industries, including financial services and insurance, technology, global consulting, publishing and telecommunications for firms in periods of transformation. Connie served as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at TIAA, where she led the successful transformation of the company’s marketing strategy, digital experience and iconic TIAA brand, and has served as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Hartford Financial Services Group, AT&T and BearingPoint as well as leading investor relations for AT&T, Microsoft, BearingPoint and others.
The two new Board members join two other Directors added to the Board in 2019 to fill out Waddell & Reed Financial’s Board of Directors with a range of business and financial industry experience that will help support, enforce and drive the Company’s growth strategy. The two other recent additions were:
- Kathie J. Andrade, a financial industry veteran who served as CEO of Retail Financial Services at TIAA, as well as a former member of TIAA’s executive committee and President of TIAA Services Broker Dealer and COO of Wealth Management. She also held a number of senior management positions at Bank of America.
- James A. Jessee, a 38-year financial services veteran who served as Co-Head of Global Distribution and President of MFS Fund Distributors, Inc. He also served on the board of the Investment Company Institute from 2014-2018.
“We are excited to add four outstanding business leaders to our Board of Directors,” said Thomas C. Godlasky, Chairman of the Board for Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. “Their broad experience in asset management, wealth management, marketing and communications complement the quality and talent of our existing Directors. We also continue to diversify the composition of the Board incorporating important, new perspectives into the group.”
“Our Board is comprised of a diverse group of individuals with expertise across multiple industries and professions. Having a strong, diverse Board of Directors working in a collaborative partnership with our executive leadership team will better position us to build upon our transformational progress to date and achieve our long-term growth strategies, all while advancing our position as a values-based and purpose-driven organization,” said Philip J. Sanders, CEO of Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc.
