NEWARK, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
SLM Corporation (Nasdaq: SLM) — more commonly known as Sallie Mae, the nation’s saving, planning, and paying for college company — announced today it has received the Champion of Diversity award from The Forum of Executive Women. The award recognizes public companies in the Philadelphia region with 25 percent or more women on their boards of directors.
“We congratulate Sallie Mae on its commitment to capitalizing on the expertise and experience of women leaders, and for recognizing this is a strategic issue important to its success,” said Suzanne S. Mayes, Esq., president, The Forum of Executive Women. “It is exciting to see a company whose mission is to help young people access higher education set an example from the very top that gender is no obstacle to achievement.”
According to “Women on Boards 2016,” a report produced annually by The Forum and PwC, Sallie Mae is one of only 19 companies in the region to qualify for the Champion of Diversity award. The recipients were identified through research of companies listed in the Philadelphia Business Journal’s 2015 rankings of the region’s top 100 public companies by revenue.
“By helping to make the dream of higher education a reality we are an equalizer of opportunity and that’s a view we embrace not just at the board level but throughout our company,” said Raymond J. Quinlan, chairman and CEO, Sallie Mae. “To best serve our customers and our employees, we seek diversity not only in identity but also in thought, opinion, personality, and experience, and we have those traits in abundance at Sallie Mae.”
The gender diversity on Sallie Mae’s Board has also been recognized by 2020 Women on Boards, a national nonprofit organization working to increase the percentage of women on corporate boards to 20 percent by the year 2020. In its “2020 Gender Diversity Directory,” Sallie Mae is listed as a “Winning (W) Company” for having at least 20 percent female representation on its board. Of the 1,744 public companies the organization evaluated last year, only 40 percent earned “W” designations.
Sallie Mae offers a variety of tips, tools, and resources to help students and families save, plan, and pay for college, all available at SallieMae.com.
Sallie Mae (Nasdaq: SLM) is the nation’s saving, planning, and paying for college company. Whether college is a long way off or just around the corner, Sallie Mae offers products that promote responsible personal finance, including private education loans, Upromise rewards, scholarship search, college financial planning tools, and online retail banking. Learn more at SallieMae.com. Commonly known as Sallie Mae, SLM Corporation and its subsidiaries are not sponsored by or agencies of the United States of America.
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