We document that heightened public attention to gender equality is associated with an increase in board gender diversity. Improvements in diversity are more pronounced in firms with a corporate culture that is already sympathetic to gender equality. When public attention to gender equality increases, firms reach out to a larger pool of women, such as women without industry experience or outside their network, but female director appointments do not appear to be dilutive of the board’s skills. Instead, we observe less reliance on connections for director appointments and a decrease in the propensity to appoint connected men.

We examine the formation and evolution of corporate risk culture, that is, the preferences toward risk and uncertainty shared by a firm’s leaders, as well as its effect on corporate policies. We document persistent commonality in risk attitudes inside firms, which arises through the selection of leaders with similar preferences and is rooted in the founders’ risk attitudes. Changes in corporate risk culture over time affect corporate investment policies, whereas cross-sectional differences in founders’ risk attitudes, that is, firms’ initial risk culture, contribute to differences across firms in persistent firm policies, such as research and development intensity.