Contributed by Jilaine Hummel Bauer, ION board member at large. She is the founder of Bauer Consulting and is on the Steering Committee of Milwaukee Women inc (MWi).

On November 16th, the day ION hosted a summit in New York attended by prominent thought leaders and business executives to consider the status of women corporate directors and strategies for increasing their number, the caption, “Summit Meetings,” caught my eye in the Wall Street Journal. Michael J. Ybarra, extreme sports correspondent for the WSJ wrote of his experience climbing the summits in Grand Teton National Park, “Not long after a glorious sunrise, I scrambled up the first of the seven major summits I was hoping to climb in a single day. Unfortunately, it was the wrong summit. From below I had misjudged which prong on Teewinot’s spiky crown was the highest…” Finding himself ten minutes of torturous navigation away from his target, Mr. Ybarra was forced to retrace his steps. Traversing a route that was complex and unpredictable with ever-changing views and potentially lethal weather, he observed that strategy and adaptability were key. Climbing alone and sometimes with others who took different paths required the interchangeable use of trust, skill and grit.

Whether a board pondering greater diversity among its members, a qualified candidate that can bring diversity to a board or ION and others who want to help ensure their success, the insights and tools for traversing what first appears to be a convoluted ridge line can also be used to make great strides towards increasing board diversity.