Organizing Women at the Top

A Committee of 200 for some of America's leading executives

More than a third of all M.B.A. candidates now are women, and many women executives have risen to positions of power and wealth in U.S. corporations large and small during the past decade. In addition, many more have started their own businesses that employ tens of thousands of people. Yet with all of that to their credit, American women executives have not made an important impact in the world of business organizations. The Business Roundtable, the most prominent collection of corporate executives, has no women members.

Last year 21 top female executives thought women should have a business forum of their own. They commissioned Susan Davis, 39, a recently appointed vice president of the Harris Bank in Chicago, to do a little headhunting. With $75,000, partly from the National Association of Women Business Owners, Davis spent nine months tracking down hundreds of women bosses. The standards: they must be in charge, wholly or in part, of companies whose sales are at least $5 million annually, or managing operations with budgets of that size in larger firms. The result was the Committee of 200, which a fortnight ago held its founding meeting in Los Angeles.

Davis says that some of the executives had to be convinced that it was in their interest to form a "national women's business group with a national focus." Assembling the group was no easy task, even though, as the search went on, Davis found 1,400 women who fitted the committee's criteria. Most successful candidates had risen to the top of their professions mainly on then-own, on talent and intelligence, without sisterhood coalitions or pushes from "old girl ties," or "networking," in the feminist jargon of the day.

Strong individualists all, many of the executives shied away from groups. In fact, 40% turned down the invitation to join. Many were entrepreneurs who had risked capital and lost sleep over their ideas. Says Davis: "For many hard-driving women executives, it was the first time they had joined a women's group."

Typical was the initial response of Inger McCabe Elliott, 49, president of the New York-based China Seas fabric and wallpaper firm (1981 sales: about $5 million): "My nose is too close to the grindstone to run around in women's rights groups." She later joined. Said she after attending the Los Angeles meeting: "I felt I was among equals."

The Committee of 200 that was finally put together represents a wide mixture of industries and regions of the U.S. The committee is a stellar collection of female executive talent from their-20s to their 70s, who come from 30 states and 70 kinds of businesses. At least 30 are in manufacturing; others are in cosmetics, distribution, public relations and advertising, securities services, retailing, construction and consulting.

Some of the members are relatively well known. They include Katharine Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Co., for example, and Betty Ruth Hollander, holder of five patents in temperature measurement and president and founder of Omega Engineering in Connecticut. Also among the new members: Christie Hefner, 29, a corporate vice president and widely considered the hare apparent of Playboy Enterprises; Investment Adviser Julia Walsh of Julia M Walsh & Sons of Washington, D.C.; Sherry Lansing, president of Twentieth Century-Fox Productions; and Florence Skelly, president of pollsters Yankelovich, Skelly& White.

Despite many initial doubts, the wom en almost universally praised the commit tee after the first meeting. Says Mary Farrar, 41, president and founder of Systems Erectors, a structural steel contractor in Kansas City: "I had no women professional associations whatsoever. I simply didn't know there were other women out there at my level with the same managerial problems." Said Diane John son, 48, executive vice president of Houston's Central Pipe & Supply Co. (1981 sales: $82 million): "Most of us are not joiners. But we decided to risk it." Added Lane Nemeth, 35, president of Discovery Toys of Benicia, Calif.: "The committee gives me a source of support, a feeling that it is O.K. to be successful." Said Judy Hendren Mello, president of The First Women's Bank in New York City: "Often we get tired of being the only blouse at a black-tie business diner. It's mind-blowing to have access to high-level women."

It was strictly business for the first meeting of the Committee of 200. Tennis and jogging events were lightly attended, while work shops on topics like problem solving and dealing with managerial stress got the crowds. Confidence ran high. Said Evelyn Echols of Chicago, whose company trains travel agents: "This group could have handled anything, including General Motors." Later this year the committee will hold regional sessions in several U.S. cities and another national meeting in the fall, possibly in Louisville.

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