Women running the boardroom: 5 female CEOs to watch

How the female perspective is reinventing traditional leadership and reinvigorating the boardroom

In 2012, 18 Fortune 500 firms were run by women. That’s a pitifully small number… a paltry 3.6 percent. As brilliant and brazen as we know we are, why aren’t more women scoring those top jobs? Some have suggested that perhaps women aren’t aggressive enough. Or dedicated enough. Or willing to make the right kinds of sacrifices.
Maybe, but we think not. Indeed, women who are in those top executive jobs are proving ‘em all wrong. They’re playing hard – and winning. Here are five such CEOs to watch…

1) Indra K. Nooyi - PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP)

When you think PepsiCo, you probably think of Pepsi. But CEO Indra K. Nooyi has worked hard to ensure PepsiCo is known for something else altogether: healthy snacks. She took the lead in the company’s acquisition of Tropicana and its merger with the Quaker Oats Company. As she worked to diversify PepsiCo away from soft drinks and potato chips (Frito-Lay is also part of the company), many people questioned her strategy – until schools started cracking down on the sale of junk food in vending machines and on school premises. Those healthier brands now make up about 20 percent of the company’s total sales, a number Nooyi hopes to grow to 30 percent by 2020.
This stock’s price has continued to climb since Nooyi took the helm in 2006. It also offers a solid dividend with a 2.7 percent annual yield.

2) Virginia Rometty - IBM (NYSE: IBM)

IBM has come first in a lot of things. It was the first company to come up with a hard disk and magnetic stripe technology. It was a leader in commercializing the personal computer. Then, in 2011, another first: It hired its first female CEO, Virginia Rometty. She had been working at the company for 30 years and was already credited with spearheading IBM’s growth strategy and getting the company into key new markets, such as cloud computing and business analytics. She was also involved in the development of Watson, the smarty-pants computer that crushed its human opponents on Jeopardy.
IBM has been around for more than 100 years, but it’s still a thriving company, and the stock has continued to grow under Rometty’s leadership. It has also shown a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over that period. It has a 1.6 percent annual dividend yield and analysts have set a target for stock price growth in the coming year.

3) Irene B. Rosenfeld - Mondelez International (NASDAQ: MDLZ)

Chances are you (and your sweet tooth) are very familiar with Mondelez International, even if you don’t recognize the name. Think Oreo cookies, Cadbury chocolates and Trident gum. These were brands that until 2011 were owned by Kraft Foods, which spun off into Mondelez and sent a CEO with it. That CEO was Irene B. Rosenfeld, a 30-year food-and-beverage industry veteran. In 2006, when Rosenfeld took the lead at Kraft after a stint as CEO of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, Oreo was doing a pitiful business in China, where people found the iconic cookie too big, too sweet and too expensive. Determined to get into the Chinese market, she leaned on Kraft’s leaders in China to come up with a flavor the Chinese would love (green tea ice cream Oreo, anyone?) – and could still twist-lick-and-dunk like their American peers. It worked. China is now the second-largest Oreo market in the world – and it’s growing by 30 percent per year.
As a newly restructured company, the prognosis for Mondelez has been mixed. But because this company makes most of its revenue in the high-margin, growing snack category – and recognizing the job cuts and aggressive moves Rosenfeld’s made to make the company leaner - analysts believe it’s positioned to be a high-growth business.

4) Denise Morrison - Campbell Soup Company (NYSE: CPB)

In 2012, the Campbell Soup Company launched more than 50 new products. It’s all part of CEO Denise Morrison’s plan to reinvent the company that was quickly going from mmm mmm good to ho hum. As consumers shifted away from old favorites, the iconic red-and-white packaging made famous by Andy Warhol’s pop-art was losing market share in what was becoming an ever smaller food category.
But, thanks to Morrison’s bold move toward innovation, including a line of soups targeted at millennials, the company has put itself into a consistent positive earnings trend, sending the stock price up to a new 52-week high on April 2. The company anticipates sales increases in the 10-12 percent range in 2013, according to Zacks, which means that this company could stand to dish up some good things for investors.

5) Marissa Mayer - Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO)

After being largely overshadowed by many of its peers in recent years, Yahoo was back in the headlines again in 2012, when it appointed Google expat, Marissa Mayer, as CEO. Since she took the post in July, she’s been both lauded and lambasted. That’s because she’s making waves. She ditched the company’s work-from-home policy, purchased a social news start-up and is looking at taking a major stake in YouTube rival Dailymotion. In other words, she’s going for it.

From: Goldengirlfinance.com/ Posted by Mags