Greenwich, Conn., July 29, 2026 – RSR Partners is proud to recognize Steven M. Mollenkopf, Independent Chair of The Boeing Company, as The Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. Chair of the Year Award recipient for the 2025–2026 proxy year. Steve is the third annual recipient of this distinguished award.
The Chair of the Year Award was established to celebrate the legacy of Russ Reynolds, an industry icon who spent more than 50 years advising corporate boards and CEOs. The award annually recognizes an Independent Chair who has helped guide a board and company through significant turbulence while demonstrating exceptional leadership, character, and integrity. Rather than a lifetime achievement award, this honor recognizes a leader who stepped up to meet the moment when it mattered most. The recipient is chosen by an independent selection committee of renowned experts in their fields, including strategic communications, activist defense, investments, human capital, and governance.
“Steve Mollenkopf’s leadership as Chair came at a defining moment for Boeing,” said Brett Stephens, Chair of the selection committee and CEO of RSR Partners. “The company’s transformation is ongoing, but Steve’s leadership has helped establish a stronger path forward for both the board and the enterprise. His impact on board culture, effectiveness, and governance during a period of extraordinary consequence makes him a deserving recipient of this recognition.”
“As a director, you want to know that your experience and perspective matter, and Steve creates that environment,” said Akhil Johri, a member of The Boeing Company board of directors. “He cares deeply about the company, listens carefully, both in the boardroom and outside it, draws out the best thinking, and helps convert a range of views into clear priorities. That ability to harness the full intellectual capital of the board has and will continue to have a meaningful impact on how we help Boeing succeed.”
“Steve is precisely the kind of leader this award was created to honor,” stated Russ Reynolds. “He is motivated by service rather than recognition, approaching his role with quiet confidence and a clear desire to make a lasting contribution. Steve leads with integrity and character, always keeping his focus on the company and the people who depend on it.”
About Steve Mollenkopf
Steve brings to the Board critical insights in engineering leadership, risk management, complex global operations and human capital management from his more than 25 years of service at Qualcomm, an engineering-driven, high-technology manufacturing company and a global leader in the development and commercialization of foundational technologies for the wireless industry. During his tenure as CEO of Qualcomm, he led the company through significant change and unprecedented challenges. Steve possesses expertise and direct leadership experience in precision engineering, project management, manufacturing, quality control and designing testing regimes for complex systems. He also brings corporate governance expertise and perspectives on a wide array of strategic and business matters from his service on the board of Dell, a global technology company focused on providing broad and innovative technology solutions for the data and artificial intelligence era. Steve is a published IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) author and an inventor on 38 patents. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. As a result of his complex manufacturing expertise, his engineering background and his record of independent leadership at Boeing, the Board elected Steve to serve as independent Board Chair.
Steve is Chair of the Board and a member of the Compensation Committee, the Governance & Public Policy Committee, and the Special Programs Committee.
About Russell S. Reynolds, Jr.
Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. (“Russ”) is an American business executive, author, and founder of two of the search industry’s most prominent firms. Considered one of the pioneers of the executive search and board recruiting profession, Russ has counseled the boards and CEOs of many of the world’s leading companies over the past 50 years. In 1969, he founded Russell Reynolds Associates, which soon became one of the world’s foremost international executive recruiting firms. Russ sold his interest in the firm in 1993. In 1994, Russ founded The Directorship Group, later named RSR Partners, where he served as Founder and Chairman until 2022.
About the Chair of the Year Award
RSR Partners announced the establishment of the Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. Chair of the Year Award in October of 2022. The award celebrates the legacy of Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. (“Russ”), who has spent more than 50 years advising boards and CEOs on leadership and governance.
To be eligible for the award, a nominee must serve as a Chair of a board of directors at a U.S. public company with revenue or market cap greater than $1 billion. The winner of the award is chosen by an independent committee comprised of renowned experts in the areas of strategy, finance, strategic communications, shareholder activism defense, investment management, human capital consulting, and corporate governance. This year’s committee included:
More information about the award can be found at: www.chairoftheyearaward.com.
About the RSR Partners
RSR Partners is a leading boutique retained board and executive search firm, headquartered in Greenwich, CT, dedicated to assisting boards and CEOs with their most crucial leadership needs. Established in 1993 by industry visionary Russell S. Reynolds, Jr., our firm brings over three decades of specialized experience in board and executive recruiting, strategic selection, and seamless succession planning.
We have successfully completed thousands of high-impact engagements for a diverse clientele, including public companies, mutual fund complexes, foundations, private equity-backed firms, and family-owned businesses. Our expertise spans a wide array of sectors, notably asset management, industrial, consumer, financial services, healthcare, marketing and digital, and technology.
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Contacts
Lindsay Griesmeyer
+1 (203) 618-7076
media@rsrpartners.com
In the high-stakes world of boardrooms, where decisions can make or break billion-dollar enterprises, the effectiveness of a board often hinges on one pivotal role: the Chair. From Fortune 10 giants to pre-IPO upstarts, a Chair’s ability to lead isn’t just about sitting at the head of the table, it’s about orchestrating the talent around it.
The best Chairs harness the unique skills of each board member, fostering a dynamic mix of decision-making and debate that leads to the best possible outcomes. While some individuals are naturally gifted in leading leaders, the most impactful board Chairs often develop their approach through relentless dedication, agility, accessibility, courage, humility, and integrity.
What Makes a Chair Exceptional?
Insights gathered from The Russell S. Reynolds Jr. Chair of the Year Award process reveal the traits that board members admire most in their Chairs:
Over the past few decades, we have seen the best boards have a “leader among leaders” as their Chair as well as stable of other capable and respected Directors who have the universal support to assume the Chair position if the time comes. In the end, the secret ingredient to Chair effectiveness isn’t just about who they are; it’s about how they lead, inspire, and elevate those around them. We are here to help boards make sure they get it right.
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Brett Stephens is the CEO of RSR Partners and helps lead the firm’s Board & CEO Services.
RSR Partners is a boutique professional services firm headquartered in Greenwich, CT, that specializes in helping Boards and CEOs with their most critical recruiting, selection, and succession needs. The firm was founded in 1993 by industry icon and Chairman Emeritus, Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. Over the past 30 years, the firm has conducted thousands of projects for Boards and CEOs at public, private equity owned, and family-owned businesses across a range of industries including asset management, consumer markets and enterprises, financial services, healthcare, industrial, marketing and digital, and technology. To learn more about RSR Partners, click here.
In 2022, RSR Partners established the Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. Chair of the Year Award, which annually recognizes a Chair of a public company’s Board of Directors who successfully led the board through significant business or governance challenges. The award celebrates the legacy of one of the search industry’s greatest leaders and icons, Russ Reynolds, who has spent more than 50 years advising boards and CEOs on leadership.
When Russ Reynolds founded our firm back in 1994, he knew that “bigger isn’t always better.” And so, he purposely created a boutique firm with a truly collaborative and client first culture, and with a goal of providing our clients with “high touch” service and unbiased advice. We started out in the boardroom, focusing our efforts on recruiting directors. As would later be the case with all of our practices, senior members of our board practice would lead and execute every engagement and handle all candidate interface, assessments, references, and client interaction. Russ anticipated that staying small would prove to have a big and lasting positive impact on our clients and help preserve our client service culture as the firm evolved. He was right. For the past 30 years and still today, we have consistently achieved, and often exceeded, our clients’ recruiting objectives, and have successfully maintained long-lasting and meaningful relationships with them. While we have expanded our offerings to include executive search and a variety of advisory services, board recruiting continues to be at the core of what we do.
The demand for outstanding director talent is as high as ever. This is especially the case when considering corporate boards’ ongoing efforts to maintain the right mix of skills and experience and the right balance of gender and ethnic diversity in their ranks in order to enable them to stay ahead of an everchanging world in which their respective companies compete. Often, boards encounter supply and demand imbalances for certain types of candidates they seek. That’s why it is very important that the board recruiting firm can guarantee access to any and all relevant candidates without any exceptions. That is a promise that we have continued to keep with our clients since our firm’s founding. Given our firm’s size and structure, we purposely conduct a limited and distinct number of search assignments at any given time, and our engagement review and acceptance process ensures that at RSR Partners, there is no competition for candidates amongst our clients.
Our extensive candidate sourcing network continues to expand and advance. We utilize our own database, social networking tools, and other internet-based candidate search technologies (e.g., LinkedIn, BoardEx, etc.) that have leveled the playing field between boutiques and large firms when it comes to candidate identification. All partners from all practices are engaged as well for candidate ideas. As such, we have the ability to identify most any candidate who aligns well with a given profile.
The benefits associated with partnering with us to achieve our clients’ most important recruiting objectives are no better reflected than in the continued success we have had in achieving our clients’ diversity objectives. Since 2021, 86% of our board placements were either gender and/or ethnically diverse (it’s important to point out that diversity was one of a number of criteria each of these placements met).
As a small and agile team, we are also known for our thorough and rapid kick-starts to board recruiting assignments. We have always strived to complete our board searches within four to five months. There have been times when searches have taken longer than anticipated, but we have always completed our assignments and have amassed a 100% placed candidate “stick rate” along the way.
If I had to point to one step in the board search process that we have learned goes a long way toward ensuring a successful outcome, it would be to put a great deal of thought and effort at the beginning of the process into creating the candidate profile. This candidate profile development process should be a collaborative undertaking between the board and their search firm, and it can be completed in a short period of time. It starts with reviewing the director skills and experience matrix in the proxy and interviewing each member of the client’s Board, their Chairman, CEO and, depending on the nature of the search, certain members of the executive leadership team. Interviews focus on what skills and experience are needed in the next director and why, as well as the characteristics that make for a great cultural and chemistry fit on the board. Then, we undertake a comparison of what criteria the board currently possesses and identify gaps, which in turn, helps to refine the candidate profile. It is important to note that the matrix in proxies does not always provide an accurate picture of the degree to which skills and experience reside on the board (i.e., checking the box versus specifying the strength of a particular skill or experience each director indicates they possess using a 1,2 or 3 rating.) The interview process is therefore helpful on several fronts – it provides a deeper understanding of skills and experience that all the directors contribute, determines what the board is looking for in its next director, and creates alignment amongst the board members around the candidate profile.
Before finalizing the candidate profile, we typically review five to ten candidate ideas with our client to get their feedback and confirm we are in agreement. Sometimes adjustments are made after the client has the opportunity to see how the profile on paper materializes in viable candidates. The goal being to create a profile that is both on target and realistic. So, when clients commit to undertaking our candidate profile development process, it almost always leads to a more successful outcome.
As the leader of RSR’s Board Practice for almost two decades, I am proud of our track record in assisting a wide variety of clients – from start-ups and private companies to Fortune 50 corporations – in achieving their board recruiting objectives. We look forward to continuing to partner with existing and new clients and staying true to the principles that Russ established in the early days of our firm:
We continue to be a small firm with big results.
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Carter Burgess is head of the firm’s Board Recruiting practice and a senior member of the Board & CEO Services team. As practice leader, he focuses on director searches, the build-out of entire boards, comprehensive board composition analyses, multi-year succession planning strategies, and board performance assessments for companies in a broad array of industries.
RSR Partners is a boutique professional services firm headquartered in Greenwich, CT, that specializes in helping Boards and CEOs with their most critical recruiting, selection, and succession needs. The firm was founded in 1994 by industry icon Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. The firm has conducted thousands of projects for Boards and CEOs at public, private equity-backed, and family-owned businesses across a range of industries including asset management, consumer goods and services, industrial, technology, and healthcare.
