April 04, 2014
Directorships: 1
Total director compensation, 2008-2012: $632,208
Average compensation for full year as director: $192,867
Lisa Caputo is currently an Executive Vice President of The Travelers Companies, one of the biggest insurance companies in the U.S. She previously worked for more than a decade at Citigroup, where she served as a senior advisor to three different CEOs and was the bank’s first global corporate Chief Marketing Officer in the years leading up to and following the financial crisis.
Caputo moved into the corporate sector after a long history as an advisor and communications officer for the Clintons. She was Deputy Assistant to the President and Press Secretary to the First Lady from 1993-1996, and she held the same job during the 1992 presidential campaign. She had previously run Al Gore’s media team at the 1992 Democratic National Convention and was National Issues Press Secretary for Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign. More recently, while still an executive at Citigroup, Caputo was a Senior Advisor to Hillary Clinton’s losing bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
Caputo earned a bachelor’s degree at Brown University and received a master’s in journalism from Northwestern. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Public Sector Leadership Initiative Advisory Board at the Brookings Institution, and is a trustee of the Economic Club of New York.
Lisa Caputo joined the Best Buy board of directors in December 2009. In the firm’s fiscal year ending on February 26, 2011, the first full year during which Caputo was a director, Best Buy shareholders paid just over $5 million for their CEO. During that 12-month period, the company’s performance was uneven at best. The next year, during which the company’s stock dipped far below the S&P average, CEO pay rose to $8.2 million, a 63% increase. The following year, during which incumbent, interim and incoming CEOs took turns in the company’s driver’s seat, Best Buy shareholders paid $26.6 million for their chief executives. Best Buy’s stock performed even worse than it had in the previous year.
