CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND RELATED MATTERS
Board of Directors and Board Leadership Structure
Our Board of Directors is comprised of Christopher J. Constant, Milton Cooper, Philip E. Coviello, Mary Lou Malanoski, Richard E. Montag, Howard B. Safenowitz, and Evelyn León Infurna, who was appointed in July 2021 to fill the Board of Directors vacancy created by the retirement of Mr. Leo Liebowitz in February 2021. Our Board of Directors is elected by the stockholders to oversee the performance of the Company’s business affairs and to set broad strategy for the Company’s growth. The Board of Directors acts as an advisor to senior management and monitors its performance. It also oversees the Company’s compliance efforts. To help discharge its responsibilities, the Board of Directors has adopted Corporate Governance Guidelines on significant corporate governance issues. The Corporate Governance Guidelines address, among other things, the size and composition of the Board of Directors, director independence, committee membership and structure, meetings and executive sessions, and director selection and training.
The Charters for each of the committees of the Board of Directors, the Corporate Governance Guidelines, and Getty’s Business Conduct Guidelines (which serve as our code of ethics under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and our code of business conduct and ethics under NYSE rules, and covers officers, employees and directors), may all be accessed through the Getty website at www.gettyrealty.com by clicking on “Investors/Corporate Governance”.
The Board of Directors and the Nominating/Corporate Governance Committee are committed to the needs of the Board of Directors and in evaluating possible director candidates will, pursuant to the Director Qualification Standards section of the Company’s Corporate Governance Guidelines, consider multiple factors including the independence, knowledge and judgment, financial literacy, breadth of skills, experience, perspective, and other attributes of a candidate, as well as diversity criteria such as race, gender, national origin, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation or identity. The Board of Directors and the Nominating/Corporate Governance Committee do not assign specific weight to any particular criteria; the goal is to identify nominees that, considered as a group, will possess the skill sets and characteristics required of the Board of Directors to fulfill its responsibilities. The Nominating/Corporate Governance Committee is committed to prioritizing for nominations qualified director candidates who are “independent” as defined in the listing standards of the NYSE and who bring diversity to the Board of Directors on the basis of race, gender, national origin, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation or identity, in addition to satisfying criteria based on relevant experience and breadth of skills. (For additional information regarding the factors considered in evaluating our director candidates, see “Nominating/Corporate Governance Committee” discussion on pages
20-
22 of this Proxy Statement.)
In addition to our website availability, copies of any of the Charters for each of the committees of the Board of Directors, the Corporate Governance Guidelines, and/or Getty’s Business Conduct Guidelines may also be obtained by submitting a written request to Mr. Joshua Dicker, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, at the address for Getty’s executive offices provided in this Proxy Statement. The Business Conduct Guidelines apply to all employees, officers and directors of the Company and waivers of the Business Conduct Guidelines for directors or executive officers, if any, will be disclosed as required by the rules and regulations of the SEC. There were no such waivers in 2021.
For the year ended December 31, 2021, our Board of Directors had seven members. The Board of Directors has nominated seven candidates for election as directors for a one-year term ending at the 2023 annual meeting of the Company’s stockholders and when their successors are duly elected and qualified.
The Board of Directors does not have a policy regarding the separation of the roles of Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) and Chairman of the Board, as the Board of Directors believes it is in the best interests of the Company for the Board of Directors to have the flexibility to make the determination whether the same person should serve as both the CEO and Chairman of the Board at any given point in time, or whether the roles should be separate, depending on, among other factors, the position and direction of the Company and the membership of the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors believes that its current leadership structure, with separate Chairman and CEO positions, is appropriate for the Company because it separates the leadership of the Board of Directors from the day to day leadership of the Company. The Board of Directors believes that separating the position of Chairman from the CEO better positions the Board of Directors to evaluate the performance of management and enables the Chairman to provide guidance to the CEO.
Following the retirement of Mr. Liebowitz, Mr. Safenowitz was appointed to the position of Chairman of the Board in April 2021. Prior to his appointment as Chairman, Mr. Safenowitz served as the Company’s Lead
