Teresa (Terry) Rasmussen, president and CEO of Thrivent, will become chair of the H.B. Fuller board in January.

The St. Paul-based adhesives company announced Monday that Rasmussen would succeed attorney Lee Mitau, who’s served as chair since 2006.

“Having worked closely with Terry, I know firsthand that she is a visionary leader who brings global perspective and deep customer and go-to-market expertise to the role,” Celeste Mastin, H.B. Fuller’s president and CEO, said in a Monday company statement. “We look forward to continuing to benefit from Terry’s extensive background in the financial services industry as we expand our presence in new high-growth end markets and transform our portfolio to become a 20% EBITDA margin business.”

Beyond the substantive leadership contributions that Rasmussen is making to the H.B. Fuller board, her selection as board chair is also significant for two other reasons.

Rasmussen will join a small cadre of women in the United States who chair public company boards. In addition, the planned retirement of Mitau as board chair represents a generational leadership transition.

Few women board chairs

In March, Deloitte released the report “Women in the Boardroom: A Global Perspective,” which showed that women still represent just a fraction of members on corporate boards.

In the United States, Deloitte analyzed 3,181 companies and found that women held 28.1% of the board seats in 2023. In the case of board chairs, women held only 8.2% of those important roles in U.S. companies.

“Despite initiatives around the world to increase the number of women serving on boards, gender parity is unlikely to be achieved before 2038. And, there is no clear path to gender parity in the board chair or CEO role,” Deloitte said in a March news release.

Locally, Jodee Kozlak broke through the board chair barriers when she became board chair of C.H. Robinson on Jan. 1, 2023. Kozlak is an attorney, veteran business executive, and the founder and CEO of Kozlak Capital Partners. Now she’s involved in tackling business challenges at C.H. Robinson, an Eden Prairie-based logistics company.

Rasmussen shares similarities with Kozlak’s professional experience. The Thrivent CEO also is in another very small club. Rasmussen is among three Minnesota women who are Fortune 500 CEOs. The other two are Corie Barry of Best Buy and Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes.

Kozlak and Rasmussen both earned bachelor’s degrees in accounting and went on to earn law degrees. Before climbing the corporate ladder at Thrivent, Rasmussen was a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, and she held several leadership roles at American Express, including managing counsel.

“Since joining [the H.B. Fuller board] in 2020, I have been impressed by the organization’s breadth of talent,” Rasmussen said in a prepared statement. “I am eager to partner even more closely with Celeste and the entire board as H.B. Fuller continues to excel and innovate globally.”

Founded in 1887, H.B. Fuller employs about 7,500 people around the globe and generated $3.5 billion in revenue in 2023.

Mitau’s strategic leadership role

When Mitau retires as H.B. Fuller board chair in late January, his service in that role will have spanned nearly two decades.

For many of those years, he also was board chair of Minneapolis-based Graco. In February, the Graco board appointed J. Kevin Gilligan to succeed Mitau. Graco noted that Mitau turned 75 in October 2023, so he would retire from the board in April 2024 as of the company’s annual shareholders meeting in accordance with Graco’s “retirement standards.”

There’s no doubt that Mitau’s philosophy continues in the current CEOs he hired as well as the business strategies he helped mold.

“His counsel and dedication created a blueprint for advancing our growth strategy and establishing H.B. Fuller as the largest pureplay adhesives company in the world,” Mastin said in the statement.

“I’m grateful to have worked alongside so many talented leaders and have great confidence in the company’s leadership team and long-term growth strategy,” Mitau said in the written statement. “I look forward to seeing what they will achieve next.”

In an August TCB article, Cargill executive Ruth Kimmelshue said that she got “a crash course in public company governance” after she joined the H.B. Fuller board in 2017.

She emphasized that she was able to “sit, listen, and learn” from two board veterans—Mitau and Bill Van Sant.

Four women currently serve on the H.B. Fuller board.

“We think having a diverse board is an asset for our company,” Mitau said in a 2024 interview with TCB. “Our workforce is diverse, and our board reflects that diversity.”