dispatches from the new world of work

Two Cool Women in Two Cool Jobs

Yesterday's Big Event in São Paulo featured "big time" speakers—Frank Maguire, credited by many with creating the fabled FedEx corporate culture; Harvard leadership guru Howard Gardner; strategy Main Man Ram Charan. But the real Star, whom I was lucky enough to meet, was/is Luiza Helena. Up from less than the high end of Brazil's economic spectrum, she has created the nation's top retailer, Magazine Luiza—among other things, it has been one of the Top 10 "best places to work" in Brazil a dozen years running, and the No.1 place twice! (Luiza gives off more energy than a platoon of normal people.)

Upon reaching Chicago I read, in Crain's Chicago Business, a terrific cover story on Padmasree Warrior. She's Chief Technology Officer at Motorola, commanding 20,000 cranky engineers (all of us engineers are congenitally cranky). Her strategy and execution thereof is leading the quite successful effort of recently moribund Motorola to take Nokia head-on.

Tom Peters posted this on 03/24/06.

Comments

Funnily enough I heard a very powerful speech yesterday in Birmingham, England by Barbara Hakin who may become Chief Executive of the NHS Barbara is standing in temporarily as CEO following the sudden resignation of Sir Nigel Crisp

Who knows, maybe the NHS is beginning to recognise women managers instead of assuming women can only be nurses ... said slightly tongue in cheek of course :-)

Posted by Trevor at March 24, 2006 11:39 AM

Top-notch panel in Brazil. Good to see women in featured spots. Strange and unfortunate that Ricardo Semler wasn't part of this. He did more to empower Brazilians--regardless of gender, background, education, or circumstance--than just about anyone else in the last 25 years.

Posted by Mike at March 24, 2006 1:01 PM

Mike, agree. I did a presentation deal with Rick in Brazil a few years ago--I was mostly his straight man.

Posted by tom peters at March 24, 2006 9:07 PM

Thanks for highlighting these two cool women and their cool jobs. I work with ambitious high school and college girls, and I'm always looking for remarkable women to inpsire them.

Posted by Kelly Dignan at March 26, 2006 5:39 PM

Yes, Luiza is a great person here in my country Brazil!
She has a diferente and modern view of business and her company grow up fast!

BRAZIL IS COMING, CHINA IS NOT SO GOOD LIKE MY COUNTRY!

Posted by Matheus mattos at March 27, 2006 8:52 AM