Nordstrom appoints Atticus Tysen to board of directors

By

Roxanne Robinson

Published
Jan 6, 2023

New year, new member. Nordstrom kicked off the start of 2023 by adding a new member to its board. Atticus Tysen, senior vice president of product development, chief information security, and fraud prevention officer for Intuit, became the 10th member of the Seattle-based retailer's board of directors.

The new role affords Tysen a 10% ownership of the company, as per the Form 3 SEC document filed on January 3, 2023. Nordstrom's US market capitalization was valued at $3.4 billion as of February 2022. According to an article in the online financial publication Yahoo! Life's Simply Wall St., companies this size generally are held mainly by institutions. In the retailers' case, 57.4% is held by institutions, 29.9% by individual owners, public companies, 9.8%, general public, 2.7%, and state or government, 0.03%. As of January 11,Nordstrom shares were selling at 17.35; the highest in the last 365 days was $29.12 on April 13, 2022.

The online financial institution also reported last February that Bruce Nordstrom is the retailer's largest shareholder, with 16% of shares outstanding. With 9.7% and 8.7% of the shares outstanding, respectively, Anne E. Gittinger and FMR LLC are the second and third largest shareholders. The company's CEO, Erik Nordstrom, also holds 1.7% of the total outstanding shares.

According to a company release, the executive has over 30 years of engineering and information security experience. His current role involves overseeing applications supporting the financial software company's core IT functions along with cybersecurity and fraud prevention operations.

Tysen previously was vice president of engineering at Aveo, Inc., where he determined overall technical direction, leading teams to create proactive technology support and messaging systems for personal computer manufacturers. Previously, he worked as a software engineering manager at OCTel and Apple. Tysen earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Stanford University.

"Atticus is a proven leader with decades of experience in the technology and cybersecurity space," said Brad Tilden, chairman of the Nordstrom board. "His background will add to the diversity of experience already represented across our board and help us hone an increasingly important area of focus for the retail industry. We're excited to welcome him and are confident his expertise will help successfully guide us as we navigate an evolving digital landscape."  

While it's not clear how this skillset will be applied in the new role, according to an article in The Washington Free Beacon, a right-leaning independent news source, The National Retail Federation in September reported the total losses from shrink—a retailer term for theft and other inventory loss—reached $94.5 billion in 2021. Retail crime incidents rose an average of 26.5% last year.