Orit Gadiesh has been breaking into boys' clubs and performing under pressure since she was an aide to the deputy chief of staff in the Israeli army at the age of seventeen. In the war room, she helped army strategists draft a plan to overcome opposition from all sides. She served during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period in Israeli history known as the War of Attrition, when the tiny nation was attacked frequently across all its borders and Egypt was a bitter foe. Back then, the choices her superiors made literally had life and death implications. But today she is the one leading the troops -- as chairman of one of the most macho American consulting firms in the industry, Bain & Company. At the age of forty-two, she took on that prominent role after its founder, William Bain, Jr., brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
Gadiesh is not alone. Based primarily on her marketing savvy and business acumen, Margaret (Meg) Whitman was recruited to run eBay, Inc., turning the on-line auctioneer into a household name and one of the leading businesses on the Web practically overnight. After building a $20 billion international business for energy giant Enron Corp., Rebecca Mark, a divorced mother of twins, landed the chairman and CEO job at the company's new water arm, Azurix. Darla Moore left her family's South Carolina farm to rise up in New York's male bastion of banking. Then she assumed control of husband Richard Rainwater's stock portfolio and nearly tripled his net worth. Shelly Lazarus became chairman and chief executive officer of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather after winning the hefty IBM account, the largest in the history of her agency. Ellen Gordon turned her father's Tootsie Roll Industries from a sleepy candy maker into a winner on Wall Street, and one of the strongest performers in the business. Although she started as a secretary at ABC Sports, Patricia Fili-Krushel rose to become the highest-ranking woman in television after assuming the presidency at ABC Television Network. Not only was she given greater responsibilities than her male predecessor, but she helped her network achieve one of its biggest programming successes in years - Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
These women are all "new paradigm" leaders, noted for their abilities to blend feminine qualities of leadership with classic male traits to run their companies successfully, and become some of the most powerful women in American business. Nearly all have reached the president, chairman, or chief executive officer level of thriving companies raking in well over $100 million in revenues. All are active leaders who have not merely kept the companies they head in a successful holding pattern. Instead, they have dramatically boosted profits and revenues. Most have taken over their companies from men and topped their results. They have also launched new initiatives that have significantly added value to their firms. They do not bother trying to run their companies just like their male predecessors, nor do they follow established norms, because they are outsiders to the corporate world. They have taken risks in their careers and developed their leadership skills by working diligently in overlooked, disparaged, or undiscovered areas of business. By excelling in these professional danger zones, they have become confident enough to rely on their own instincts and to exercise their own judgment. They lead in their own new way, and they are part of a new generation of women who chose a different path to excel in the corporate world.
Up until the mid-1990s, women were still conspicuously absent from top positions at almost all the largest companies in the United States. Catalyst reported...
