Corporate Governance

Tom Harty is Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Meredith Corporation, the leading media and marketing company reaching nearly 95 percent of all U.S. women and owner of local broadcast television stations reaching 30 million Americans.

Harty has played a key leadership role in developing and executing Meredith’s strategic initiatives since joining the Company in 2004. These include growing Meredith’s connection to American consumers across media platforms, meaningfully strengthening its digital capabilities, and enhancing its relationships with advertising and marketing partners.

As President and Chief Executive Officer, a position Harty assumed in 2018, Harty oversaw the integration of brands and properties acquired from Time Inc. Prior to that, Harty served as President of Meredith’s National Media Group, where he led the acquisitions of Allrecipes.com and subsequent launch of Allrecipes magazine, as well as the additions of the Martha Stewart Living, Rachael Ray Every Day, FamilyFun, Parenting, and EatingWell brands to the Meredith portfolio.

Before joining Meredith, Harty served as Senior Vice President, General Manager for The Golf Digest Companies, a division of Advance Magazines. His broad media company experience includes executive positions with T.V. Guide, where he served as Vice President and Publisher, and Reader’s Digest, where he was Advertising Director. In addition, Harty has held key business positions with The New York Times Company, Forbes, and Gruner + Jahr USA.

Harty currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Association of Magazine Media. He also serves as a board member of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the economic and community development organization for Des Moines, Iowa, where Meredith has been based for nearly 120 years. Harty holds an MBA from Iona College and a B.S. in Business Administration from Castleton University.

Elizabeth E. Tallett, Lead Independent Director, joined the Meredith Corporation Board of Directors in August 2008. From 2002 to 2014, Tallett was Principal of Hunter Partners, LLC, a management company for early to mid-stage pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies. She continues to operate as a consultant to early stage pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.

Tallett has more than 35 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical and consumer industries. Her prior senior management experience includes serving as President and CEO of Transcell Technologies Inc.; President of Centocor Pharmaceuticals; member of the Parke-Davis Executive Committee; and Director of Worldwide Strategic Planning for Warner-Lambert Company.

Tallett was born and educated in England. She graduated from Nottingham University with two First Class Honors degrees in Mathematics and Economics.

Tallett also serves on the Board of Directors of the Principal Financial Group; Qiagen, N.V., the leading global provider of sample and assay technologies; and Anthem Inc., a health benefits company. Previously, she served on the Boards of Coventry Health Care, Inc.; Varian, Inc.; IntegraMed America, Inc.; Varian SemiConductor Equipment Associates Inc.; and Immunicon, Inc. She was a founding Board member of the Biotechnology Council of New Jersey, and is a Trustee of Solebury School in Pennsylvania.

Don Berg is President of DCB Advisory Services, which provides consulting services to food and beverage companies ranging from start-up companies to multinational conglomerates.

Berg spent 26 years with Brown-Forman Corporation, a family-controlled NYSE listed global producer and marketer of fine quality beverage alcohol brands and one of the largest companies in the global wine and spirits industry, retiring as Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer in April 2014. During his career with Brown-Forman Berg held various domestic and international executive positions, including President of Brown-Forman Spirits Americas, the Company’s largest operating group; head of its corporate development and strategy functions; director of its mergers and acquisitions group; and was President of Advancing Markets which held responsibility for leading Brown-Forman in to the emerging markets (which led the Company’s globalization taking international sales from representing 15% of sales (1994) to over 60% of sales (2008).

Prior to joining Brown-Forman, Berg held various finance, sales and marketing roles with respected national and international consumer goods and pharmaceutical firms. He began his career as a Certified Public Accountant with Ernst & Whinney.

Currently, Berg is the non-Executive Chairman of the Board of Gildan Activewear Inc, a publicly-held dual listed Canadian global branded apparel company, after previously serving as Chair of the Compensation Human Resource Committee, and as a member of the Audit/Finance and the Governance/Social Responsibility Committees. Berg has been a director of Gildan since 2015. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Meredith Corporation (since 2012), a publicly-held media and marketing company, where he is Chair of the Audit Committee. Berg also recently joined the Board of Beam Suntory International (April 2019), one of the largest and privately-owned global spirits companies owned by Suntory Holdings in Tokyo Japan.

He also serves as Chairman of the Board of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center at the University of Louisville, and as a Trustee of Bellarmine University. He is a past Trustee of Augustana College.

Mr. Berg holds a Master of Business Administration degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (1983) and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting and Business Administration from Augustana College, IL (1977).

Beth Kaplan is currently the Managing Member of Axcel Partners, LLC investing in consumer facing early stage and growth companies. Prior to this, Kaplan was President and Chief Operating Officer at Rent the Runway, a fashion apparel company with a technology soul disrupting the way women get dressed. In her role, Kaplan worked closely with the co-founders and oversaw finance, operations, merchandising, customer insights, business development, and retail.

Prior to joining Rent the Runway, Kaplan served as President and Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer, and Director at General Nutrition Centers Inc. where her focus was on key strategic initiatives surrounding the marketing & merchandising of GNC stores, development of an ecommerce platform, and product development. Kaplan played an integral role in the company’s 2011 IPO, the most successful IPO that year. Prior to GNC, Kaplan served as Executive Vice President and General Manager at Bath & Body Works where she oversaw the merchandising and marketing of the new flagship store format. Prior to Bath & Body Works, Kaplan was the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Merchandising at Rite Aid Drugstores, and prior to that spent 16 years at Procter & Gamble, her last role being President and General Manager of the Cosmetics and Fragrance division, including Cover Girl and Max Factor.

Kaplan received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been recognized in the industry for her work on a number of occasions including Drugstore Marketer of the Year in 1998 and one of Advertising Age’s Top 10 “Women to Watch” in 1999. She was the keynote speaker this year at Baltimore’s Women to Watch event. In addition to Rent The Runway and Meredith, Kaplan is also a director of the Howard Hughes Corporation, a director of Framebridge, a director of Leesa Sleep, and a director of Car/of. She was previously a director at Blackboard (public), Sleepys (private equity), Things Remembered (private equity), Minute Clinic (venture), and The First Years (public).

Kaplan splits her time between New York City and Baltimore, Maryland, and is married with two sons.

Roberts is a strategy and growth advisor to MIC Capital Partners, and specializes in providing strategy, innovation and portfolio expansion advice to CEO’s and senior leadership teams of consumer product focused companies in the MIC capital portfolio.

Prior to joining MIC, he was the Chief Customer Officer for Land O’Lakes where he was responsible for enterprise customer strategy, and the redesign and implementation of a revitalized approach to improve customer acquisition, retention and an improved and consistent experience. While at Land O’Lakes he also led the Dairy Division as its President.

Prior to Land O’Lakes, Roberts held positions of increasing responsibility at Cargill Inc. This includes serving as president of Cargill Foodservice North America, where he was responsible for leading that division’s operations, finance, talent development, business strategy, product portfolio and mergers and acquisitions. At Cargill, Roberts also served as president of its Value Added Protein and Kitchen Solutions businesses.

Roberts began his career in leadership roles first at PepsiCo Inc. and later at The Coca Cola Company.

Roberts earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Illinois and a Master of Management degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of Young Life International, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of underprivileged adolescents around the world.