Women In Business - It's Good to Be the Boss

PepsiCo. Xerox. eBay. ADM. Kraft Foods. Sara Lee. Avon. The list of brand-name companies with women chief executives is longer and more impressive than ever, after a year of stunning breakthroughs in corner-office hiring. The first big surprise landed in the spring, when $37-billion-a-year Archer Daniels Midland wooed former Chevron exec Pat Woertz to take over. In June came the next shocker: Kraft Foods, which three years ago had failed to offer enough growth opportunities to keep rising star Irene Rosenfeld from walking away, persuaded her to return as CEO after a dynamic run at Frito-Lay. But the biggest news hit in the heat of August when PepsiCo unexpectedly announced that CEO Steve Reinemund would be stepping down. The front-runner to succeed him, most observers assumed, was an American man, Mike White, who had turned around Pepsi's international operations. Yet Pepsi's board defied the stereotypes, instead tapping Indian-born strategist Indra Nooyi. She had served as president and CFO since 2001 but had never run a line business at Pepsi - as naysayers had long pointed out. Still, by promoting herself as a visionary she won the board's support.