Women's Board Award 2022

CONGRATULATIONS TO MARIANNE WIINHOLT

RECIPIENT OF WOMEN'S BOARD AWARD 2022

56-year-old Marianne Wiinholt received the prestigious Women's Board Award on Friday, March 25. The award was presented by Bjarne Corydon and new jury chairman Lars Rasmussen at Deloitte in Copenhagen in the company of 150 invited guests.

Marianne Wiinholt has a long-standing career at Ørsted, formerly Dong Energy, most recently as CFO and VP. A position she will resign from on 1 April to take up the position of Group CFO of WS Audiology. At the same time, Marianne Wiinholt has embarked on a professional board career with current positions in Norsk Hydro and Coloplast.

”I am incredibly proud and happy to receive the award. I see it as a recognition of the role I play in the companies where I am on the board. Board work is a teamwork. A strong team dynamic and good relations with management are crucial for creating value in board work, and this is something I place great importance on, and feel I succeed with. I represent the typical CFO profile that is 'plug and play' in relation to leading an audit committee. However, the many years of experience in large and complex companies mean that my focus is much broader, and that is what makes it interesting for me”

It is a jury of experienced board leaders who have chosen Marianne Wiinholt as the recipient of the Women's Board Award 2022, with outgoing jury chair, Thomas Thune Andersen, in the lead:

"I have deeply appreciated my collaboration with Marianne over many years, both at Ørsted and in the other board-related assignments we have had together. Marianne is a role model of the highest calibre and deserves this important recognition for her great efforts."

"In addition to a strong executive career and relevant board experience, it is important that the award recipient can and will use the award to be an active ambassador for the diversity that is lacking in the Danish board landscape. We need competent, clear role models who dare to take the lead."

Marianne Wiinholt is the seventh recipient of the Women's Board Award in Denmark. She has been selected from an extensive pool of female board members who do not yet hold a chairperson position but are assessed to have the potential as role models for future board leaders of both genders. The candidates have delivered documented economic results and have strong references from their professional careers both inside and outside the boardroom.

”I wish there was no need for a special board award for women, but there is, until the day when women for one reason or another do not 'step down' before they reach the top management levels. Especially, women are strongly underrepresented in CEO positions. I have been on the board of Norsk Hydro for many years, and there I see the measures they have taken in Norway to get more women on boards are working. I believe that a broad toolbox must be used to get more women forward in the front ranks, where some have an effect quickly and others will take time, here I would mention shared parental leave, which I believe will have a great effect in the long run. Role models are important, and here I believe an award like the Women’s Board Award makes a difference”

THE JURY'S MOTIVATION

The recipient of this year's award has been active on the board front for more than a decade – across the Nordics, with a number of positions in absolutely significant companies in various industries.

At the same time as her board work, this year's award recipient has also managed to hold a particularly demanding and responsible executive position in a company that has undergone major transformations, high growth, and new ownership structures for a long time. A company that today is one of the country's largest and, in the spirit of the times, also among the most sustainable and green – and all tasks that our award recipient has solved with flying colours – without it in any way affecting her commitment or efforts in board work. Or vice versa, of course!

Thus, both former and current board colleagues state about our award recipient that they have met in her a rarely thorough preparation, an always active meeting participation, a great focus on "the ball" – even though the ball moves with time, a great "fighter spirit", a pronounced degree of integrity, always with well-balanced considerations between the short and the long term, an ever-pleasant and accommodating personal style with strong contributions to the good atmosphere in the boardrooms, and finally – but not least – with particularly strong contributions within her areas of expertise, which include economics, finance, and risk management.

Nor has our award recipient been idle on the education front, and has thus continuously kept herself updated – also after her original master's degree – with courses at, among others, IMD and Wharton. She has also contributed to the development of good board work herself, partly as a lecturer on CBS's board education, and partly as a board member of the Danish Directors Association.

No one on the jury has thus been in doubt that it is one of the country's most diligent work capacities that will receive the honor Women's Board Award 2022 today, and it is a unanimous prize committee that is happy and proud to announce that this year's award recipient is: Marianne Wiinholt.

SEE MEMBERS OF THE JURY