Hello, and welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Edwards Life Sciences Corporation. My name is Mike Massala, and I am the Chairman and CEO of Edwards, and I will be chairing this meeting. I now call the meeting to order. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge the COVID-nineteen pandemic and express that all of us here at Edwards hope that you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy. To ensure the safety of our stockholders and team at Edwards, we decided to conduct our annual meeting virtually.
We have also adopted a series of safeguards, which we believe provide all stockholders the same rights and opportunities to participate in this meeting as they would be in an in person meeting. We have established clear processes around submitting and responding to stockholder questions and we'll post the questions and answers on our Investor Relations site as soon as practical after the meeting. A replay of this meeting will also be available on our website. Last month marked our 20th anniversary as a public company and I wanted to say to you, our stockholders, how much we appreciate your continued support. Edwards' long standing commitment to helping patients has resulted in an impressive global leadership position.
We're very pleased to achieve strong financial and operating performance in 2019 and we also added significant talent this past year and most notably, we made important progress on future advancements in structural heart disease and critical care monitoring to help even more patients. Edwards is also committed to philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. Since its inception, the Edwards Life Sciences Foundation has strengthened our communities and supported health causes around the world with more than $70,000,000 in charitable grants and passionate volunteer support from Edwards' employees. A little later in the meeting, I'll have more to say about our foundation as well as how Edwards performed in 2019 and Q1 of 2020 and what is yet to come. But now moving on to the business portion of today's meeting, Linda Park, Corporate Secretary of the company will act as the secretary of this meeting.
She has reported to me that notice of this meeting was duly given all stockholders of record on the record date. Our preliminary report of Inspectors of Election indicate that a majority of shares entitled to vote at this meeting are represented and that we have a quorum. Before I introduce your Board of Directors, I want to thank Wes Von Schaack for his years of service to Edwards. After 10 years of service on our Board of Directors with 9 of those as our Presiding Director and Lead Independent Director, Wes is retiring from the Board as of the close of this meeting. Wes, through your leadership and contributions, you have helped to make Edwards what it is today and we thank you for your commitment to our company and our purpose.
And now I'd like to introduce the Director nominees. Martha Marsh will now serve as our Lead Independent Director. She was the former President and CEO of several substantial hospital systems, the most recent of which was the Stanford Hospitals and Clinics. Martha also has years of Board experience, including corporate governance chairmanships currently serving on the Board of AMN Healthcare Services. Kieran Gallahue, Chairman of Envista Holdings, Executive Chairman of the Board of Intersect ENT and a member of the Board of Directors of Arena Pharmaceuticals.
He was the former Chairman and CEO of CareFusion, which was acquired by Becton Dickinson with a long career of strategic operational and corporate management experience in the healthcare industry. Leslie Heise, a former Investment Banking and Financial Executive at Salomon Brothers and Lazard Freres. Leslie is the Chair of our Audit Committee. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of Public Storage and on the boards of the Kaiser Foundation and Capital Group Private Client Services. Bill Link, the Managing Director and Co Founder of Versant Venture and Chair of the Compensation and Governing Committee.
Bill was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Chiron Vision, which was acquired by Bausch and Lomb and founded the company that became Advanced Medical Optics, now a Johnson and Johnson Company. Bill also serves on the Board of Second Sight Medical Products and Glaukos. Steve Lorenger, the former Chairman, President and CEO of ITT Corporation. Steve is on the Board of Xylem and is the Senior Advisor to the CEO of FlightSafety International. Steve also serves on the Board of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation.
Nicholas Valeriani, former CEO of the Gary and Mary West Health Institute. Nick spent more than 34 years with Johnson and Johnson in positions with increasing responsibility, most recently serving as the company Group Chairman Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and also serves on the Board of RTI Surgical and Ramona Sequeira, a Board nominee at this meeting. Ramona currently serves as the U. S. President and leads global portfolio commercialization for Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
She's also a member of the Board of Pharma. Ramona has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry through her work with Takeda and Eli Lilly. Her passion for health care innovation and patient access align with the values and strategy of our company. I'd like to say that I am very proud of the strength, diversity of experience and independence of our Board members. I'd like to thank each of you for your dedication and commitment and for the time and energy that you devote to serving Edwards and its stockholders.
Now let me introduce Edwards' executive leadership team. Don Bobo, Head of Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development and our newest initiatives Todd Brinton, our Chief Scientific Officer Devim Chopra leads our Surgical Structural Heart Business Dierksen Lehmann, Head of Public Affairs Jean Luc Lemercier, responsible for our Europe, Middle East, Africa, Canada and Latin America regions Christine McAuley, Head of Human Resources John McGrath, who leads Quality, Regulatory and Clinical Affairs. John will be retiring this summer, and we'd like to thank him for his extraordinary service. Joe Nuzalese, the Head of Global Supply Chain Arnold Pinkston, our General Counsel and the newest member of our executive leadership team Katie Ziman, Head of our Global Critical Care Business Scott Ellum, our Chief Financial Officer Kamen Wang, responsible for Japan, Asia and Pacific regions Larry Wood, Head of our Global Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Business and Bernard Zavigian leads our transcatheter mitral and tricuspid therapies. Our executive leadership team is a very talented and experienced group of individuals that is united in their dedication to achieve our company's goals.
Each of these leaders lives the values of our credo and I'd like to thank you for all that you do to fuel Edwards' continued success. Also joining us today via phone is Mikael Nasloyan from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the independent registered public accounting firm for our company. He will be available to respond to any questions a little later in the meeting. Linda Park and Cynthia Scobeland, a representative of Broadridge Financial Solutions, have been appointed and duly sworn in as the inspectors of election for this meeting. I'd now like to move to the main business of the meeting.
And after all items have been presented, there will be an opportunity for questions regarding the proposals. The polls are now open. As a reminder, stockholders attending the virtual meeting can vote their shares online from now through the closing of the polls by logging into the meeting website as a stockholder and clicking the Vote Here button on their screen. If you've previously voted by proxy and do not wish to change your vote, your vote will be cast as you previously instructed and no further action is required. We will now proceed with the first item of business.
The first item is the election of directors, each for a 1 year term. There are 8 total Board nominees, including myself. Our Board recommends about for each of the nominees. Since no notice of any nominees was received in accordance with the bylaws of the company, nominations for our Board are now closed. The second item of business is an advisory vote to approve the The 3rd item of business is to approve the 2020 Non Employee Director's Stock Incentive Program.
Our Board recommends a vote for this proposal. The 4th item of business is to approve an amendment of the Certificate of Incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock for the purpose of affecting a 3 for 1 stock split. Our Board recommends a vote for this proposal. The 5th item of business is the ratification and appointment of Pricewaterhouse Coopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2020. Our Board recommends a vote for this proposal.
The final item of business is consideration of a stockholder proposal to require the Board of Directors to adopt the policy allowing stockholder action by written consent. The Board of Directors recommends a vote against this proposal. John Chvedden or his representative will be presenting that proposal. Operator, please open the line for the stockholder proponent.
Hello. This is John Chivid. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can hear you.
The meeting leader, can you hear me? Yes. This is Provost VI, adopt a new shareholder right, written consent. Shareholders request that our Board of Directors take the steps necessary to permit written consent by shareholders entitled to cast a minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize an action at a meeting at which all shareholders entitled to vote thereon were present and voting. 100 of major companies enable shareholder action by written consent.
This proposal topic won majority shareholder support at 13 large companies in a single year. This included 67% support at both Allstate and Sprint. This proposal topic also won 63% support at Cigna in 2019. This proposal topic would have received more votes than the 63% to 67% at these companies, if more shareholders had access to independent proxy voting advice. The right for shareholders to act by written consent is gaining acceptance as a more important right than the right to call a special meeting.
This seems to be the conclusion of the Intel Corporation shareholder vote at the 2019 Intel Annual Meeting. The directors at Intel apparently thought they could divert shareholder attention away from written consent by making it less difficult for shareholders to call a special meeting. However, Intel shareholders responded with greater support for written consent in 2019 compared to 2018. Written consent support Flowshare Corporation increased from 43% to 51% in 1 year. Written consent also received 45% support at the Bank of New York Mellon in 2018 and the Bank
Yes. So to the audience, we're unable to see what the problem is. It looks as though Mr. Chabaudan's line is still connected, but we've lost audio there. I'll remind you that his proposal is in the proxy statement.
So at this time, I can take any questions that are related to the proposal. There'll be time later in the meeting for any general questions. So in order to allow for broad participation, we ask that you please limit the number of questions to 1 plus one follow-up. We did have one question that came in online. It reads, is the say on executive pay vote higher in 2020 compared to 2019?
I don't know the precise numbers. And again, I think we'll see that in the final analysis. But what I've seen, it looks very close. I think we're in the 94%, 95% favorable to approval range both last year and this year. All right.
Since there are no more questions, I hereby declare the polls closed, and I will announce the vote results later in the meeting.
This is John Chevedden.
This is the operator. Before going into Q and A, Mr. Chibetin would like to finish his remarks. Please proceed.
So is now the time to speak?
One moment. Please proceed, sir. We can hear you.
I'm not getting anything from the meeting leaders acknowledgment. This is John Chevedden. I need acknowledgment from the meeting leader that he can hear me. Is this John Chevedden?
Yes, we can hear you. Please proceed.
Okay. I'll just finish up on what I was reading the last part of the proposal. This is Proposal 6, adopt a new shareholder right written consent. The right for shareholders to act by written consent is gaining acceptance as a more important right than the right to call a special meeting. This seems to be the conclusion of the Intel Corporation shareholder vote at the 2019 Intel Annual Meeting.
The directors at Intel apparently thought they could divert shareholder attention away from written consent by making it less difficult for shareholders to call a special meeting. However, Intel shareholders responded with a greater support for written consent in 2019 compared to 2018. Written consent support at Flowserve Corporation increased from 43% to 51% in 1 year. Written consent also received 45% support at the Bank of New York Mellon in 2018 and the Bank of New York Mellon said it adopted written consent in 2019. Please vote yes, adopt a new shareholder right, written consent proposal 6.
Okay. Thank you. I'll now proceed to the shareholder questions and answers. There were several that were submitted. I'll read the question and then respond.
First question was, how many employees contracted COVID-nineteen? I don't know the precise number. It's less than 1% of our global population. I'll remind you that Edwards is one of the critical industries that needed to continue our work during the pandemic and our supply chain group of more than 8,000 employees have continued to do their work through this time and we've been really impressed that we've been able to maintain a reasonable level of safety because it's so important during this period. Next question.
Is there a promising new technology to protect employees from the spread of COVID-nineteen? Thanks for the question. Yes, we continue to prioritize the health and safety of our employees and stay very close to the most trusted sources like the CDC and the World Health Organization and have availed ourselves of all of the best practices. I can't tell you that there's any promising new technology beyond what you already know. Those practices like physical distancing and face covering and hand washing and all that's important.
Obviously, when we're when our employees are inside our clean room, they have the advantage of a very clean work area with very filtered air. And finally, what percentage of employees can do most of their work from home? So as I mentioned, we have about 8,000 of our employees of the 14,000 that actually need to come in and be physically present because they're part of our supply chain and many of the Edwards products have a fair amount of human interaction with them to actually create those. And so that work needs to be done on-site. Of our other professionals, they have done a remarkable job.
Many have changed their practices to be able to work from home. We have field people that go into hospitals to support our technology in those cases every day and they've done a remarkable job about when they can they operate from home. And then we have those that typically operate in offices and those people have been predominantly being able to do their work from home and again have done a great job of continuing to try and do all the most important things to support patients. So thank you all for your questions. And now let me report to you the preliminary voting results.
The inspectors of election have informed me that all 8 Director nominees, including myself, were elected as Directors of the company for a 1 year term. Stockholders have advised that they approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers. Stockholders have approved the 2020 Non Employee Director of Stock Incentive Program. Stockholders have approved the amendment of the certificate of incorporation to increase the authorized number of shares of common stock for purposes of affecting a 3 for 1 stock split. Stockholders have ratified the appointment of PWC as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2020.
And stockholders have advised that they do not approve the stockholder proposal regarding action by written consent. All votes are subject to final count certified by the Inspector of Elections. We'll report the final vote results on a Form 8 ks filed with the SEC within 4 business days from today's meeting and a written report on the matters voted on today will be provided by the Inspector of Elections and included in the minutes of the meeting. This concludes the business of the meeting today. This meeting is now adjourned.
When we hold our meetings in person, we always like to end with a patient video as a reminder to our stakeholders of why we work so hard and do what we do. We will go ahead and run a video and then end our webcast. And before we do, I want to thank you for joining us today and for your continued support. Please take good care.