Online ticketing service Eventbrite said Friday that it is adding a new board member, former president and CFO of First Republic Bank, Katherine August-deWilde.
The financial services executive joins Eventbrite’s board as it tries to achieve profitability, perhaps prior to evaluating a potential initial public offering. The San Francisco-based company, which was last valued at more than $1 billion, has had a slower path to its billion dollar valuation than other recent upstarts in Silicon Valley.
To show that business is strong, Eventbrite said Friday that it helped sell tickets for more than 2 million events in 2015, and processed over 100 million tickets in 180 countries. The company, which makes money from charging event organizers a fee, said that it has processed more than $5 billion in gross ticket sales since it was founded ten years ago.
Founded by married couple Kevin and Julia Hartz, Eventbrite is an online marketplace for tickets to events and parties.
August-deWilde led First Republic through two IPOs as well as an acquisition. She currently sits on the bank’s board along with those of solar energy giant Sunrun and human resources company TriNet.
The new director’s appointment comes amid increased attention to Silicon Valley’s gender diversity challenges in offices and in board rooms. Women account for only a small portion of most tech company workforces and, in some cases, are completely absent from their boards.
August-deWilde will be Eventbrite’s second female director—former eBay president Lorrie Norrington is also on the board.
Eventbrite said that nearly half of its employees are women and that 40% of its executive are female. Of the company’s engineers and technical staff, 20% are female.
According to data collected from a number of large technology companies, Eventbrite is ahead of the curve in gender diversity: on average, only 30% of tech employees are women.