Wednesday, March 3, 2021The Wharton Club of Southern California is bringing together some fantastic Wharton alumnae to walk us through their experiences serving on non-profit and corporate boards as well as steps you can take to prepare yourself for joining a board.
Kenna Wyllie Baudin, W’98 (panelist)
Kenna Wyllie Baudin serves as Head of Egon Zehnder’s Private Equity Practice in the U.S. She focuses on placing senior-level executives at private equity funds and in PE-backed portfolio companies. She is also one of the leaders in the Board Practice and the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Council.
Before joining Egon Zehnder, Kenna served as Head of Private Equity at J. Safra Asset Management. That was preceded by the role of Director of 3i Plc, an international investment firm. Earlier, Kenna was a Principal at Solera Capital. She began her career at The Boston Consulting Group.
Kenna earned a BS in economics, cum laude, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where she was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, and an MBA with Second Year Honors from Harvard Business School.
Married with two children, she believes in giving back to the community and has served as an alumni interviewer for Sponsors for Educational Opportunities, as vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of the University Heights Charter School, and as an active member of the parents’ association of The Pingry School. She currently serves as Chaplain for the Greater Essex County Chapter of Jack & Jill of America, Inc. and is a lifetime member of the Harvard Business School African-American Alumni Association (HBAAA). Kenna is also a yoga enthusiast.
Lynn J. Jerath, W’95 (panelist)
Lynn J. Jerath has 25+ years of experience in institutional and entrepreneurial real estate investment. Over her career, Lynn has completed $10 billion in transactions of various forms, including complex joint ventures with operating partners, direct purchases and sales of real estate, public market transactions, mezzanine investments, and other highly structured transactions. Through her widespread work in real estate and twenty years of philanthropic engagement, Lynn has realized the extent to which racial segregation exists not just geographically but also in capital availability. Her current focus is on impact investments to improve the situations of people living in Chicago’s most profoundly disinvested communities, and across the United States, and is currently launching an impact investment company.Lynn raised a $50M opportunity zone fund in 2019 for an Indianapolis real estate group, previously ran an absolute return, value oriented long/short hedge fund focused on publicly traded real estate and related sectors, and has also owned and operated her own real estate. Prior to founding Citrine, Lynn spent seven years as a Senior Vice President and partner at GEM Realty Capital, a real estate securities and private equity firm. Prior to GEM, Lynn was a Vice President at The Carlyle Group and worked at Goldman Sachs (The Whitehall Funds).
Lynn is on the Advisory Board of Sundance Bay, a Utah based real estate investment company. Previously, she served on the board of Lotus Bancorp for ten years until its sale in 2015 and on the Advisory Board of Megalytics, a CRE tech start up. She is the Chair of the Urban Development and Mixed Use Purple Council, member of the ULI Health Leaders Initiative within the Urban Land Institute, member of the Economic Club of Chicago, and on the non-profit boards of the Chicago Furniture Bank and Embarc.
She is a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, incoming member of the University of Pennsylvania’s Endowment Investment Board, Advisory Board member of Penn’s Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, member of the Trustees Council of Penn Women, and has endowed an undergraduate scholarship. She graduated magna cum laude from Wharton in 1995.
Lynn lives in Chicago with her husband, Kunal, two sons Amar and Avi, and dog Riley.
Meesh Pierce W93, WG98 (moderator)
Kelly Breslin Wright, WG’98 (panelist)
Kelly Breslin Wright has over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy. Kelly is currently a Board Director at Fastly (NYSE:FSLY), Lucid, and Even. She has served as former Director or Advisor at Amperity, Asana, and Dropbox. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business where she teaches Go-To-Market Strategy. Prior to board work, Kelly spent 12 years at Tableau Software, where she led worldwide sales and field operations as Executive Vice President of Sales. She joined Tableau as the company’s first salesperson and tenth employee in 2005, and under her leadership, Tableau’s revenue grew through an IPO and global expansion from zero to $850m. Before Tableau, Kelly spent time at Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Bank of America, Dale Carnegie Training, and AtHoc. She earned her BA from Stanford University and MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Kelly is active on over a dozen women on board organizations and speaks regularly on topics including sales, go-to-market, growth, culture, transformation, leadership, and diversity.
