It has not been a good year.
By almost any metric, the presence of women in the boardrooms of Georgia’s publicly held companies went down. And trends are not looking good.
According to the Georgia nonprofit OnBoard, the percentage of women directors of Georgia’s public companies declined for the first time since 2014, going from 27.4 percent in 2025 to 26.8 percent this year.
Consider this: The percentage of women directors of Georgia’s public companies has grown steadily since 2014, when women accounted for 11.23 percent before reaching an all-time high in 2025.
At the same time, the number of Georgia’s public companies has declined from 126 in 2022 to 94 this year, which means the total number of director seats also has shrunk from 1,043 to 814. The decline in public companies can be explained by some having gone private or some having been acquired by out of state enterprises.
That’s why OnBoard, which bases its annual data from SEC filings, relies on percentages for comparisons year-to-year. The cut-off for the 2026 data was Aug. 28.
The most alarming data point in the 2026 study was the drastic drop in the “fill rate.” OnBoard looks at the open director seats, and it counts the number of women who filled those seats.
In 2024, 37.65 percent of the available board seats (85) were filled by women. In 2026, that dropped to 19.4 percent (67), the lowest fill rate since 2015, when it was at 11.49 percent (with 87 women filling director seats).
“That’s the killer,” Lisa Robinson, president and CEO of OnBoard, said of the fill rate.
Grace Nelson, executive director of Magenta who compiles the annual OnBoard study, explained the fill rate is an indicator of the future. And it represents “two consecutive steep declines” in the fill rate.
Robinson and Nelson were asked if they could explain why there’s been a drop in the numbers.
“The declining fill rate does coincide with a shift in climate and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policy,” Nelson said. “We can’t say for sure that the shift in DEI policy caused the fill rate to drop, but I think it is reasonable to hypothesize that companies are less deliberate about including diverse candidates than they were several years ago, and that this is contributing to the decline.”
Robinson said some blame the decline on an anti-DEI sentiment because “it once was a directive” for companies to add diversity to their boards.
But no matter the reason, Robinson said OnBoard members should do all they can to reverse the decline.
“From my perspective, this should motivate people to continue their efforts in whatever capacity they’re in to remain committed to advancing more women on boards,” Robinson said. “It’s about doing it intentionally.”
The one data point that did not decline was the percentage of women officers at Georgia’s public companies, which went from 18.6 percent in 2025 to 19.7 percent in 2026. Still, the actual number of women in C-suites has declined from 131 in 2022 to 106 in 2026.
Nelson did a reality check, noting that only one in five executives at Georgia’s public companies are women. She said that’s a focus area for OnBoard because women executives often can recommend a woman to serve on a corporate board. Also, women executives are good candidates to serve as corporate directors.
Another sobering statistic was the drop in the number of companies that were at parity, meaning they had at least as many women directors as men.
In 2024, there were eight companies at parity – Avanos Medical, Bakkt Holdings, the Coca-Cola Co., First Advantage Corp., Intercontinental Exchange, Invesco Mortgage Capital, National Vision Holdings and Vestis Corp.
Last year, there were only five companies at parity: Avanos Medical, Bakkt Holdings, the Coca-Cola Co., First Advantage Corp. and Intercontinental Exchange. This year, there were only three companies: the Atlanta Braves, Flowers Foods and Cumulus Media. Since the Aug. 28 cutoff date, Cumulus has become a privately held company.
Other key metrics that OnBoard tracks include the percentage of women-held seats on Georgia’s Fortune 500 companies.
That also decreased from 34.24 percent in 2025 to 32.8 percent, from 63 women directors a year ago to 55 in 2026. The number of Georgia’s Fortune 500 companies went from 17 to 16.
OnBoard also follows the “Power of Three” companies, or those that have three or more women directors on their boards. That went from 46 companies to 41, a drop of 1 percent to 43.62 percent.
Last, but not least, the percentage and number of board seats held by women of color also decreased. In 2025, 6.75 percent of board seats were held by women of color (59), and in 2026, that percentage was at 6.5 percent with only 53 women of color on the boards of Georgia’s public companies,
Nelson said it’s important to remember the OnBoard study only captures statistics at one point in time, and the world of business is one of constant change.
“To me, what sticks out is this is a snapshot,” Nelson said. “We have to understand that reaching a milestone is not the same as sustaining it. What tells the story is having metrics over a long period of time.”
OnBoard has been tracking the presence of women on Georgia’s public company boards since 1993. That year, less than 1 percent of board seats were filled by women, and more than 73 percent of Georgia’s public companies had zero women on their board. Now that’s one bright spot in the 2026 study. For the first time ever, less than 10 percent of Georgia companies, 9 of Georgia’s 94 public companies, have no women directors.
Those nine companies are: Alzamend Neuro, Dogwood Therapeutics, Guided Therapeutics, Luvu Brands, Parks America, Regional Health Properties, ScanTech AI Systems, Volato Group and Wheels Up Experience. Nelson said Luvu Brands has only one director, so it’s an outlier. The other companies all have at least four directors.
Robinson said OnBoard is doing all it can to help urge companies to add women to their boards and C-suites.
“We do board searches for free,” she said. “In the past year, we did 25 to 30 searches. Connecting people is a big deal.”
OnBoard will hold its annual event, the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Award Dinner, on Thursday, Nov. 5 at the Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Sandy Springs.
The annual award will go to Lori George, a Fortune 500 director who serves as chair of the nominating and governance committee for Shake Shack. She also is a director of Coca-Cola Company United Inc., and she is a retired executives of the Coca-Cola Co.
The keynote speaker will be Dottie Pepper, PGA Tour announcer for CBS Sports, a 17-time LPGA Tour winner, a two-time major champion and a best-selling author.
