Executive joins GoDaddy board — Former Apple

GoDaddy adds woman to board and her background might signal a coming IPO.

GoDaddy has appointed Betsy Rafael to its board of directors. She is the former Chief Accounting Officer at Apple and Finance VP at Cisco Systems. Rafael also serves on the boards of Echelon and Autodesk.

Rafael is the first woman on GoDaddy’s Board of Directors, although the firm has a number of women in leadership roles counting the CMO, CTO, Chief Communications Officer, and General Counsel.

Looking beyond the key headline of GoDaddy adding a female board member (which is somewhat rare at tech firms), this may be another sign that the firm is gearing up for an initial public offering in the future. Ahead of Rafael joined the board it consisted mostly of GoDaddy’s investors. Rafael adds outside accounting and finance board leadership, as she serves on the audit committees of the other two boards she is on.