by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

Year after year, the number of female CFOs in the Fortune 1000 remains flat, or perhaps slightly down. Last summer, CFO Magazine reported that 10 female CFOS had joined the Fortune 500 and ten had left. However, only one month after they published that list, Erin Callan left her post as CFO at Lehman Brothers. Although Callan claims in interviews that the decision to leave was hers –a sacrifice as the public face of the company during a time shareholders wanted to see drastic change—most insiders believe she was ousted as a scapegoat by CEO Dick Fuld.

Susan Decker’s “departure” story involved the upward trajectory of two female executives. Decker left the CFO job at Yahoo to become president of the Internet company. Recently, however, she resigned as president when she was passed over for the CEO spot. But, the new CEO is a woman. The Internet company hired Carol Bartz, formerly of AutoDesk, to guide the struggling giant.

Another move with an interesting back story is that of Christa Davies. Davies had a high ranking position as a divisional-CFO with Microsoft. While on maternity leave, she received a call to join Aon Corp., a $10 billion company, as Executive Vice President, Global Finance. She is now Aon’s Chief Financial Officer.

Other female CFOs include Jean S. Blackwell, an attorney by training, who held many positions in Cummins, including serving as General Counsel from 1997 and Chief Financial Officer from Chief Financial Officer of Cummins Inc. from February 2003 to April 2008. Blackwell is currently serving as the Chief Executive of Cummins Foundation and Executive Vice President of Corporate Responsibility at Cummins Inc.

After 24 years with United Stationers, the last six of which as CFO of the organization, Kathleen S. Dvorak resigned from the company to “seek new challenges”. She now serves as CFO of Richardson Electronics in Illinois.

Judy C. Lewent, the first woman to serve as the CFO of a major corporation, held the position of Chief Financial Officer of Merck & Co., Inc. from 1990 until September 2007. She currently serves as co-chairman and executive vice president of Merial Limited.

The following women appear to have retired from daily corporate life:

Dianne M. Neal served as executive vice president and CFO of Reynolds American from August 2004 to December 2007. She is serving on several boards, including the Reynolds House Museum of American Art.

Patricia A. McKay was the Executive Vice President and the Chief Financial Officer of Office Depot. She held this position from October 2005 through March 2008 until she was replaced amid poor earnings reports. She had previously served as the executive vice president/CFO job with California-based Restoration Hardware.

Marianne M. Parrs served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Office of International Paper Company from November 2005 until the end of 2007. Ms. Parrs also serves on the boards of CIT Group Inc.; the Rise Foundation in Memphis, Tennessee; and the Leadership Academy in Memphis, Tennessee.

JoAnn Reed retired on March 15, 2008 after nearly 20 years at Medco Health Solutions, Inc., including 16 years as the company’s Chief Financial Officer. She is currently serving in an advisory capacity to the company through 2010.

E. Follin Smith joined Constellation Energy as senior vice president and chief financial officer. She left the company and the position of CFO to “be more actively involved with my children at this stage of their lives.”

Linda Dimopoulos started at Darden Restaurants in 1982 and was promoted from CIO to CFO in December 2002. She remained in that position until retiring June 2007 after 25 years of service to the company.

Statistics don’t lie –the percentage of women CFOs in the Fortune 500 is very small, as is the number of women across the C-suites. And while that in and of itself may not be news, it is still an important story about gender inequity in the workplace. However, the stories of women like Decker, Davies and Callan fill in some of the details of what is happening for women in corporate America.

The good news, as reported by CFO Magazine, is that there is a strong pipeline of female corporate controllers and treasurers at the top companies in the wings and in line to take the helm – women such as Joan Lordi Amble, EVP & corporate comptroller, American Express; Mary Boland, SVP & CFO, The Americas, Levi Strauss; Aileen Blake, EVP & controller, Northern Trust; Marcia Dall, VP & financial officer, Cigna Healthcare; Kim Harris Jones, VP & chief controller, Chrysler; and Teri List, VP, finance, global operations, Procter & Gamble.

by Anna Collins, Esq. (Portland, Maine)

Following the election of Barack Obama, there has been an increase in discussion of how the election of the first African-American President will impact opportunities for minorities seeking to move into executive positions of leadership. In order to assess such opportunities, The Executive Leadership Council commissioned a poll of 150 executives shortly after the election.

The good news is that 75 percent of the executives believe that having minorities in senior executive positions is particularly important to providing new ideas and to better reflect the diversity of customers. The bad news is that the findings also demonstrate that African-American women face serious challenges in their climb up the corporate ladder. Thirty-one percent of the surveyed executives attribute those challenges to weaker or less strategic networks available to African-American women. Inaccurate perceptions of African-American women’s capabilities (24 percent) and work/life balance demands (23 percent) round out the top three issues cited as preventing or slowing down their rise.

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