The Industry With the Most Female CEOs Isn't What You'd Expect -- Journal Report
October 23 2018 - 12:30AM
Dow Jones News
By Lynn Cook
Men still dominate the oil patch, but women have carved out
their own turf in the energy business: Utilities have more female
chief executives than any other sector in the S&P 500.
From Lynn Good, the longtime chief of Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke
Energy Corp., to Geisha Williams, the new head of PG&E Corp. in
San Francisco -- and the first Latina CEO in the history of the
Fortune 500 -- companies that provide electricity and natural gas
to the public have a record of putting women in the corner office.
Nearly 20% of the utilities in the S&P 500 are run by
women.
That the utility sector has so many women in charge today is a
testament to how it prioritized female executive development years
ago, says Jane Stevenson, head of the CEO succession practice at
executive-recruitment firm Korn/Ferry.
"You can't just find these women and their next move is CEO,"
she says. Women, like men, need to be part of a company's
operations and rotate through profit-and-loss centers of the
business to really understand it.
Patricia Poppe, an industrial engineer who is chief executive of
CMS Energy Corp. in Michigan, now knows the power business inside
and out. She joined the utility world as a power-plant director,
coming from General Motors Co., where she worked for Mary Barra
managing auto plants in Michigan, Ohio and California.
When GM tapped her to move to South Korea to manage a plant
there, Ms. Poppe realized that her twin girls would go into third
grade and enter their fifth school, which worried her. A chance
meeting with an old friend and co-worker from GM who had made the
leap to the power sector compelled her to make the switch, too.
"His sales pitch was 'You'll have a better life,' " she says. "I
worked for GM for 15 years and we were moving every 18 months.
That's why I left. It was a great company and a pivotal time. But
we took the option to come home and settle down."
At the time, Ms. Poppe says, she didn't think leaving the auto
maker for a power company was a brilliant career move, but about 18
months into the job people at the utility started to talk to her
about the possibility of becoming CEO. "Honestly, I had no idea my
career would accelerate the way it did," she says. "I had worked
for them six years when I was named CEO, but the whole time I was
being rotated into key positions in the company to prepare me."
Many women who aspire to the highest rank find themselves siloed
too early in their careers, Ms. Stevenson says. In contrast, Ms.
Poppe had roles in operations, including lateral moves, as well as
stints in regulatory jobs and customer service, which are key in
the business of providing heat and electricity to the public. That
kind of varied experience between finance and operations also
helped women like Constance Lau, CEO of Hawaiian Electric, and
Patricia Kampling, CEO of Alliant Energy Corp., based in Madison,
Wis., rise to the top office at their utilities.
At a recent meeting of power-company chiefs, Ms. Poppe says,
people laughed when they realized "there are more Patricias around
this table than Toms."
Ms. Cook is the management bureau chief for The Wall Street
Journal in New York. She can be reached at lynn.cook@wsj.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 23, 2018 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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