Black MBA - Winter 2007/2008 - (Page 22) FEATURE Inside the Corner Office “Since there aren’t many of us up there in the ivory tower, it sends a negative message to the business community that we can’t handle the job.” —Cheryl Broussard “What really hurts is that they both stepped down at the same time,” said Broussard, CEO of Cheryl Broussard & Co. and author of Sister CEO: The Black Woman’s Guide to Starting Your Own Business. “Since there aren’t many of us up there in the ivory tower, it sends a negative message to the business community that we can’t handle the job.” Back east in Philadelphia, Pa., Bernard E. Anderson, the Whitney Young Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is taking a more optimistic view. “We’ve had some breakthroughs,” said Anderson, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. “Ken Chenault was a breakthrough. Parsons was a breakthrough. We’re not going to hit 1,000 on all of them. We’re going to win some. We’re going to lose some. I am absolutely convinced it’s not going to be about race; it’s going to be [about] performance.” Consternation among Blacks over the departures of O’Neal and Parsons is understandable. It was major news in 1995 when Bob Holland, an African American, became CEO of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s. It wasn’t until 1999 that Franklin Raines, head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton administration, became the first African American CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Raines took over the management of Fannie Mae, the shareholders-owned secondary mortgage company set up to expand affordable housing in the U.S. Three months later, American Express Co. announced that Ken Chenault would be promoted to CEO in 2001. In 2002, Richard Parsons became CEO of Time Warner. This same year, O’Neal was promoted to CEO at Merrill Lynch. In 2004, Clarence Otis was named CEO of Darden Restaurants. When Sears acquired Kmart in 2005, Alwyn Lewis became CEO of Sears Holdings. In 2006, Ronald Williams ascended to CEO of Aetna. The following year, Rodney O’Neal was elevated to CEO of Delphi, the auto supply company. And just missing the top tier was John Thompson, CEO of the 515th-ranked computer software company Symantec. 22 BlackMBA • Winter 2007/2008 • www.nbmbaa.org ©Charles Ommanney/Getty Images http://www.nbmbaa.org
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