Atlanta Woman's Top 25 Professional Women To Watch

January 6, 2008

I t is an eclectic group of women, for sure. But Atlanta Woman magazine's Top 25 Women To Watch have many similarities as well. Each is accomplished but certainly not at the peak of her career. Each has forged her own path while continuing to be a leader in her field, as well as in the community. A committee, which included our esteemed advisory board, selected these 25 women from hundreds of nominations. Narrowing it down to 25 was difficult but rewarding as well. Reading through the pages and pages of accomplishments of the women who were nominated raises our spirits about the impact women are having in Atlanta and, indeed, the world. It also reinforces our belief that the pages of Atlanta Woman will be filled with stories about amazing women for years to come.

Susan Bell
Managing Partner
Ernst & Young
Not only is Susan Bell the managing partner of Ernst & Young’s Atlanta office, she is also an assurance and advisory services partner, serving several large public companies.

Before she became managing partner in October 2007, Bell led the firm’s Southeast Risk Advisory Services practice.  Bell has more than 23 years of experience in working with large public companies and serving in external audit and business advisory roles, primarily in the utilities, telecommunications, transportation and manufacturing industries. 

In addition, she has led or supervised audit engagements as well as performed due diligence and other advisory work related to mergers and acquisitions, formation of partnerships and joint ventures, U.S. and international debt and equity offerings, internal audit functional assessments and enterprise risk assessments.

Since joining Ernst & Young in 2002, Bell has served in numerous leadership positions, including participation in the Southeast Area’s inclusiveness and gender equity initiatives, executive sponsorship of the Atlanta Professional Women’s Network, participation on the Americas Corporate Social Responsibility Partner Advisory Council and election to the Americas Partner Advisory Council. 
  
Marsha Anderson Bomar
Founder, CEO
Street Smarts Inc.
Marsha Anderson Bomar founded Street Smarts Inc., a transportation planning and engineering consulting firm, in 1990. Today the mid-size firm offers a variety of services, including traffic engineering, roadway design, land surveying, landscape architecture and geographic information systems. The company, which has offices in Florida and Texas as well as at its Duluth headquarters, employs more than 100 people.

Anderson Bomar, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn as well as a master’s of civil engineering from Princeton University, was the first woman to serve as the international president of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
 
Anderson Bomar recently received the 2005 Society of Women Engineers’ Entrepreneur of the Year award in which she was cited for “demonstrating that business can be done successfully, as well as ethically, creatively, with flexibility and family-friendly policies.” She was also among women engineers profiled in “Changing Our World: Trust Stories of Women Engineers,” a book published by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Amy G. Brady
Vision Transformation
Program Executive
Networking Computing Group
Bank of America
Amy G. Brady is the vision transformation program executive for the Networking Computing Group at Bank of America, where she is responsible for providing technical, functional and strategic leadership. She has been charged with effecting major cross organizational change in the bank and has an aggressive execution timeline of 18 to 24 months.

Brady is accountable for implementing new technology, information, process, product and people frameworks across NCG that will enable improved operational effectiveness and install rapid, on-demand technology products. With more than 20 years in the industry, Brady previously was the customer experience and operations executive for the bank’s Consumer and Corporate Services Technology Group.

Brady has held a variety of management positions at Bank of America, including leading the Quality and Productivity Innovation and Development team in which she managed an innovative research and development program charged with designing and testing products, services and delivery methods to significantly enhance customer satisfaction. In addition, she serves as the executive sponsor for the Atlanta LEAD Chapter, Bank of America’s women’s networking group.

Katherine Bryant
Vice President, Consumer Advocacy
ChoicePoint
 Katherine Bryant, vice president of consumer advocacy for ChoicePoint, which provides identification and credential verification services for businesses and government, was named to this position in October 2006.

In this capacity, Bryant leads ChoicePoint’s ongoing effort to make the company’s processes more transparent to consumers. She is responsible for consumer outreach, which involves building and maintaining relationships with consumer advocates to create awareness of ChoicePoint’s consumer policies and practices. In addition, she is responsible for routinely evaluating existing policies regarding curious and affected consumers and for developing new policies as the need arises. 

Bryant joined ChoicePoint in February 2001 as assistant general counsel responsible for compliance and regulatory matters concerning the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Her concentration included federal and state FCRA requirements applicable to consumer reporting agencies, customer FCRA requirements and consumer disclosure rights, and privacy laws.

Before joining ChoicePoint, Bryant was an associate with Morris, Manning and Martin LLP in Atlanta and earlier with Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons LLP in Denver, Colo.  Her practice consisted of mergers and acquisitions, employment law and general corporate affairs.

Mica R. Endsley, Ph.D
Founder, President
SA Technologies Inc.
As president of SA Technologies, Dr. Mica R. Endsley leads a team of researchers and designers to apply high-caliber situation awareness solutions to government, military and industry applications. She is a recognized world leader in the design, development and evaluation of systems to support human situation awareness and decision-making. This human-centered design approach has been found to be critical to successfully integrating people with advanced technologies and automation in a variety of domains.
   
Being aware of what is happening around you and understanding what the information means to you now and in the future is the basis for situation awareness. The majority of errors that occur are a direct result of failures in SA, when people are required to make fast-paced critical decisions. By uncovering how people think and work, SA-oriented design and training creates powerful and efficient user-focused systems to reduce human errors and system failures.

Projects include research related to situation awareness in future cockpits and air traffic management systems, information dominance in distributed teams in battlefield scenarios, training for situation awareness in aircraft maintenance, and the development of advanced decision support systems for enhancing situation awareness.

Chris Cooper,
Executive Vice President
Private Banking
Georgian Bank
Chris Cooper, executive vice president, oversees the Private Banking team at Georgian Bank. She is a member of the bank’s executive committee, reporting directly to Gordon R. Teel, chairman, president and CEO.

As head of Private Banking, Cooper manages a growing team of 26 experienced professionals in the bank’s five office locations — Alpharetta, Buckhead, Cumberland, Gwinnett and Powder Springs. Cooper joined Georgian Bank in July 2005 and has been instrumental in leading the rapid growth of its private banking business.

In the banking industry for more than 30 years, Cooper began her career with the Citizens & Southern National Bank in branch banking. While managing the West Paces Ferry office, she worked with a number of Atlanta’s high net-worth individuals. After attending the bank’s Corporate Banking Program, she was asked to start its Private Banking Group in Buckhead. Private banking was a relatively new concept at the time.

After 17 years with C&S, Cooper, a breast cancer survivor, left to help start the Enterprise Bank of Atlanta, a de novo bank with a private banking focus. That bank ultimately was sold to a larger regional bank. She later managed the retail mortgage group for another Atlanta bank, again focusing on the high net-worth borrower.

Mary N. Ford
Vice President, Marketing
Cbeyond Inc.
 Mary N. Ford is responsible for corporate communications, sales training and sales operations as vice president of marketing for Cbeyond Inc., a voice and broadband Internet provider whose aim is to serve small businesses. Ford leads a team of 48 marketing and sales operations professionals who work to define, develop and execute marketing, community affairs and sales operations programs.

Among her accomplishments are helping create the foundation for product development and successfully launching Cbeyond’s flagship service, BeyondVoice, which is a competitive differentiator, and developing the company’s sales progression model.

In addition, she co-founded Cbeyond Women Network, a venue for women working at Cbeyond to meet, share ideas, and support one another. Today CWN comprises 115 members and meets monthly for educational events and networking and contributes to employee retention and development.

Ford has contributed to the development and implementation of Cbeyond’s community affairs program, Cbeyond Community Connections‚ which is designed to encourage employees to give back to the communities where they live and work.  To date Cbeyond’s employees have participated in more than 140 volunteer service projects. In 2007, President Bush honored Cbeyond with the Gold Level Volunteer Service Award for its volunteer service efforts.  

Gail Grimmett
Senior Vice President,
Revenue Management
Delta Air Lines
Gail Grimmett is senior vice president of revenue management for Delta Air Lines.  In this role, she is responsible for optimizing Delta’s $16 billion in annual passenger revenues by developing and implementing strategic pricing initiatives, including optimizing the number of seats sold at each fare level. Under Grimmett’s leadership, the revenue management team implemented an industry-leading revenue management system plus competitive pricing strategies that accelerated Delta’s emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy by achieving its revenue targets more than a year ahead of schedule. She also is responsible for all revenue and economic forecasting within the company.

In addition to her current role, Grimmett has managed some of Delta’s most challenging assignments during her 12-year tenure, including serving as managing director – investor relations, chief economist of corporate financing, and director of financial planning.

Before joining Delta, Grimmett spent four years as a senior regulatory economist with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  While there, she was responsible for conducting, writing and publishing economic and technological feasibility analyses to be included with promulgated regulations. During her OSHA career, Grimmett published four regulatory impact analyses and received the secretary of labor’s outstanding achievement award.

Jean S. Holloway
Executive Vice President
Private Banking Group
Bank of North Georgia
Jean S. Holloway is the market leader for the Private Banking Group at the Bank of North Georgia.  In addition, she is a member of the bank’s operating committee and credit committee.  Her passion is business development, so she spends much of her time meeting with clients and prospects.

Holloway started the Private Banking Group at the Bank of North Georgia in 2001 with three former bank colleagues, and it has since grown to more than 35 team members, $415,000,000 in deposits and $400,000,000 in loans.   She will readily tell you that “the key to our success is our people. They have a passion for our clients and a ‘can-do’ attitude.” In addition to the Private Banking Group, she coordinates the activities of seven Synovus Financial Services team members in the Atlanta market who enhance the private bank services.  

Holloway has 28 years of experience in the banking industry, primarily in private banking in the Atlanta market. Previously she was a manager in private banking at C&S Bank and led the private client initiative for SunTrust Bank from 1992 until 2001.
   
Terri Jondahl
Chief Executive Officer
CAB Inc.
Terri Jondahl is the CEO and a major shareholder of CAB Inc., a supply chain management company specializing in importing, distributing and manufacturing steel pipe flanges, steel industrial castings and forgings, and components for large wind towers. Its customers include mining, agriculture, railroads and various industrial sectors. 

When Jondahl, who at age 12 worked as a hotel maid, joined CAB in 1996, the Oakwood, Ga.-based company had revenues of $3.5 million. The company expects to close out its fiscal year with revenues of more than $100 million. She is changing the ways companies manage their supply chain practices by CAB’s   commitments to price, quality and promptness of delivery as well as its providing warehousing prior to shipment, thus allowing CAB to deliver a value-added solution to the customer with a profitable return on investment. Under her leadership CAB owns its U.S. manufacturing and warehousing/distribution facilities and has developed manufacturing partners and quality control offices in China, India, South Korea and South Africa.

Jondahl is a member of the Committee of 200 — a group of influential women business executives — as well as the American Wind Energy Association, the American-Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and the American-Hanoi Chamber of Commerce.

Nancy C. Juneau
Chief Executive Officer
Juneau Construction Co.
 Nancy Juneau is CEO of Juneau Construction Co., a general contracting and construction management firm specializing in hospitality, collegiate and residential facilities as well as historic renovation.  The company is one of the largest female-owned general contractors in Georgia, and over the last 22 years, Juneau has become a leading voice
for women in the construction industry.

Before joining forces with her husband, Les Juneau, president of Juneau Construction, she held positions with Metric Constructors in
Florida and with Atlanta-based Heery International, a full-service architectural and engineering firm. Starting her career with these firms gave her diversified experience with in the industry.

She is a past board member of the Associated Builders and Contractors and is frequently an invited speaker for the National Association of Women in Construction.  She is also the 2007 recipient of the  Construction Visionary Award given by the National Association of Women in Construction.

Kristin R. Kirkconnell
Senior Vice President,
Information Services
and Technology
AGL Resources
Kristin R. Kirkconnell was named senior vice president of information services and technology for AGL Resources, an energy services holding company and natural gas distributor, in February 2007 and continues to serve as the company’s chief information officer.  In this role, she is responsible for enhancing the company’s technology platform, managing information systems and aligning business goals with technology solutions. AGL Resources is the parent company of Atlanta Gas Light Co., Virginia Natural Gas, Chattanooga Gas Co., Elizabethtown Gas in New Jersey, Elkton Gas in Maryland, Florida City Gas and other energy and infrastructure holdings.

Before joining AGL Resources, Kirkconnell served as chief information officer for consumer and interconnect services with BellSouth. While at BellSouth, she also helped lead the implementation of Oracle’s Customer Relationship Management solution. Kirkconnell served as vice president for the National Association of Securities Dealers regulation. In this capacity, she directed the development and deployment activities associated with registration and licensing systems. She also has held numerous positions in financial applications and regulatory systems with leading companies, including EDS and Universal Systems Inc.

Gina Price Lundberg, M.D.,  FACC
Director
Saint Joseph’s Hospital’s
Heart Center for Women
Gina Price Lundberg, M.D., FACC, is one of the leading doctors for women’s heart problems. She is the president of the Center for Preventive Cardiovascular Care, PC. She founded and directed the Women’s Heart Center, the first women’s cardiac prevention program in Georgia, in 1998.  She also founded and directed the Heart and Health Center for Women at Northside Hospital in 2001.  She is currently the director of the Heart Center for Women at Saint Joseph’s Hospital.

She was named by Gov. Sonny Perdue to the advisory board for 2007-2008 for women’s health, Georgia Department of Women’s Heath, Department of Community Health.  She is a clinical associate professor of medicine at Emory University and teaches cardiology fellows at Grady Hospital.  She also teaches preventive cardiology to medical students at the Medical College of Georgia.
  
Dr. Lundberg attended the Medical College of Georgia and trained in internal medicine at Atlanta Medical Center.  Her cardiology fellowship was at Rush University in Chicago. 

Kendra Leffingwell
Executive Vice President,
Sales and Marketing
Enterpulse
Kendra Leffingwell joined Enterpulse, which specializes in business process management, enabled by portal and content management technologies in 1999 and is the executive vice president of sales and marketing.

In her position, she oversees the business development team across the country and manages the company’s sales process while ensuring continuity of the corporate presence. In addition, she continues to manage the relationships for the company’s strategic alliances, which include Oracle, Interwoven and Endeca. Leffingwell ensures her teams work with partner sales teams to pursue joint opportunities with these partners while maintaining the consistency and integrity of the overall company offerings.

Leffingwell came to Enterpulse with 10 years of experience in the financial services industry at INVESCO Capital Management Inc., where her assignments ranged from designing and managing the client extranet, to working in the portfolio management group, to working on the Equity trading desk. This experience allowed Leffingwell to serve in a critical capacity as subject matter expert for many of Enterpulse’s financial clients, including Raymond James, the Florida’s State Board of Administration, Equifax and J.C. Bradford, now part of UBS.

Erin Corbin Meszaros
Chief Marketing Officer
Powell Goldstein
Erin Corbin Meszaros is chief marketing officer for client relations and business development for the law firm of Powell Goldstein. In this capacity she helps to implement the firm’s marketing strategies, public relations, advertising and client relations programs.

Meszaros has developed a significant track record of business development programs and key item strategies used to generate new clients. She leads the firm’s individual and group business development planning programs. In addition, she provides business development coaching to individual attorneys to integrate and align their initiatives with the firm’s overall strategic plan.

Among her achievements has been handling a live, national broadcast of a mock trial demonstration on electronic signatures, establishing an e-mail and “drip” marketing campaign and implementing professional development training courses.

Meszaros came to Powell Goldstein from Lord, Bissell & Brook LLP. Before working in law firms, she managed and assisted in the development of a 166-condominium complex in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

Monica Neal
Vice President/Station Manager
Peachtree TV, TBS
Monica Neal has been named vice president/station manager of Peachtree TV, Turner Broadcasting System Inc.’s new local Atlanta broadcast platform. In this role, she oversees all day-to-day operations of the channel, which features nightly prime-time movies and a daytime lineup of popular sitcoms as well as Braves baseball and local events.
  
Neal most recently served as the vice president of operations strategy and the new products group, with responsibility for management of strategic priorities and initiatives and for driving the development and implementation of long-term strategies and potential business opportunities for new business growth.

In 2005, Neal joined Turner Broadcasting’s New Products Group as vice president/senior project leader. In this role, she evaluated and shaped new product ideas and coordinated product development efforts among cross-divisional areas.

She joined Turner Broadcasting in 2000 as director of public relations for Turner South and was promoted to vice president in 2002 and later added publicity oversight for Turner Classic Movies to her duties.

Neal came to Turner Broadcasting from Court TV, where she served as director of corporate communications.

Kay Olin
President
Interep Local Focus, Atlanta
Kay Olin has always been fascinated by broadcast media and recently celebrated her 25th year with Interep, the nation’s largest independent sales and marketing company. During her tenure with Interep, Olin has initiated several key programs within the organization.  In 1994, she founded and served as chairman of the company’s Quality Service Team, a program dedicated to ensuring the highest level of service for Interep’s client stations and the advertising agencies that it serves.  She has also been actively involved with Interep’s RAPPER (Radio Apprentice) Program, an intensive training program for people starting careers in radio.

In September 2007, Olin was named president of Interep’s newest division, Interep Local Focus.  The new operating company provides national representation for station groups in small-to mid-sized markets with national billings under $500,000.

Olin started her career as an account executive at WIVY-FM in Jacksonville and just a few years later, at age 28, she was named general manager of radio station WANM-FM in Tallahassee. The promotion made Olin one of the first female general managers—not to mention one of the youngest—in the country.
   
Olin is an eight-time winner of Interep’s prestigious Chairman’s Circle Award in recognition of exemplary service.

Beatriz R. Perez
Senior Vice President,
Integrated Marketing
The Coca-Cola Co.
Beatriz R. Perez is the senior vice president, integrated marketing, for the North America Division of The Coca-Cola Co., where she is responsible for negotiating, leading and executing all media, interactive, entertainment and sports strategy and partnerships.  Such partnerships include NASCAR, the NCAA, the PGA, the Olympics, the NBA, LeBron James, American Idol, the Creative Artists Agency and many others across film, music and television.

 Among her accomplishment are developing the award-winning Motorsports marketing platform that launched Coca-Cola as the official soft drink of NASCAR, the Coca-Cola Racing Family and securing the Daytona 500 partnership.  Before this assignment, she worked on the Coca-Cola and Sprite brand teams and was responsible for multicultural marketing initiatives, including advertising development, media planning and activation.

Before joining Coca-Cola, Perez was employed at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, where she worked on The Coca-Cola Co.’s account that was focused primarily on initiatives with Telemundo and Univision, and she led the development of a grass-roots community relations tool kit for Coca-Cola bottlers.

Kristin S. Rinne
Senior Vice President,
Architecture and Planning
AT&T
Kris Rinne is one of the leading technologists in the country. She is responsible for wireless industry standards development, long range technology planning, and the network and device planning for new products and services for wireless at AT&T. She also has broader network architecture responsibility for the corporation.

Before taking this position, Rinne was Cingular’s chief technology officer with similar responsibilities. Earlier she served as vice president of technology and product realization and was responsible for new product development from a technology standpoint, handset certification and infrastructure vendor coordination.

She planned and helped deploy the first high-speed wireless network in the world using a technology called HSDPA, which is now the standard for high-speed wireless networks worldwide. She was also a key player in the launch of the Apple iPhone because her team had to test and certify the device for the AT&T network. In addition, her team led the efforts to launch visual voicemail, which allows users to see their e-mails and choose who to call back in any order in conjunction with the iPhone.

Michelle Robinson

Michelle Robinson was recently named  senior vice president of Verizon Communications’ Southern Region, which has 8,000 employees (5,000 in metro Atlanta) in six states. In this position she is responsible for shaping and advancing Verizon’s public policy strategies for the company’s wireless and enterprise business segments and also directs its philanthropic activities, which mostly focus on enhancing literacy by harnessing the power of the Internet in K-12 classrooms, tackling healthcare issues and keeping Internet users safe online. In 2007, she awarded almost $375,000 to nonprofits in Georgia alone.
 
Robinson has an extensive background in policy development, public affairs and corporate communications. Before taking her new position, Robinson was vice president, California Regulatory Affairs, in San Francisco and was responsible for Verizon’s public policy positions before the California Public Utilities Commission.
 
She began her career at Verizon nine years ago and has held numerous management positions in the areas of public policy and government relations. Recently, Robinson was the lead public policy speaker at the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative (NOBEL) Women’s annual conference.  

Susan Denise Sumner
Partner
KPMG
Susan Denise Sumner, a partner at the accounting firm of KPMG, has 15 years of experience in professional services. In 2004 she was selected to participate in an elite three-year rotational development position with the firm’s national office in New York, where she advised and assisted top client engagement teams with complex issues. Upon completion of her rotation, she returned to Atlanta to use her enhanced skills in serving clients as a professional who strives to do the right thing in the right way in an increasingly complex accounting environment. She is an account manager who develops client relationships and serves her clients with integrity.

Currently she serves as the co-chairwoman of KPMG’s Network of Women, which was established to create a multicultural environment to foster networking and mentoring for women and to provide women the opportunity to develop leadership skills. In addition, she serves on KPMG’s Employer of Choice Task Force, which is a committee that oversees and guides the firm’s initiatives to promote work-life balance.

Sumner is serving on the finance committee of the Girls Scouts of Northwest Georgia and is active in the Empty Stocking Fund. She previously served the fund as president and also was on its board of directors for a three-year term.
  
Patty Knap Tucker
Deputy General Manager/EVP
Edelman Atlanta
Patty Knap Tucker leads the $7.5 million corporate affairs practice in Edelman’s Southeastern office and serves as deputy general manager/executive vice president of Edelman Atlanta.  She brings more than 22 years of public relations experience to the specialties of corporate reputation management, business-to-business marketing and corporate social responsibility.  

The hallmark of Tucker’s career is long client retention, with two 11-year client relationships, a 19-year relationship she now manages, and a handful of others who have been with her practice more than five years.  She is recognized for her ability to bring fresh strategy, consistent results and return on investment for clients.

Tucker leads the agency’s UPS team and also drives strategy in the Southeast for the community relations and corporate reputation campaigns of Wal-Mart.

Previously Tucker was executive vice president of The Headline Group, where she founded its corporate and business-to-business practice in 1981.  Over more than 14 years she helped grow the firm tenfold and then to integrate it into Edelman after its sale in 2002.

Lisa Walker
Vice President,
Airport Customer Service
Atlantic Southeast Airlines
 As Atlantic Southeast Airlines’ vice president of Airport Customer Service, Lisa Walker is responsible for the overall strategic direction and coordination of all airport-related activities in all markets that ASA serves, including its hometown hub in Atlanta. She oversees more than 900 customer service employees located in 40 ASA-operated locations. She also has responsibility for customer service training and for all aspects of ASA’s properties and facilities contracts.

Walker began her airline career in 1982 as a station agent in Memphis, Tenn., with Southeastern Airlines. She joined ASA in 1983 when it acquired Southeastern. Since then, she has held roles of increasing responsibility and scope. Walker most recently secured a multimillion dollar, 200,000-square-foot hangar facility in Atlanta for ASA’s Atlanta maintenance operation and is overseeing the renovation of its office space, which will become the airline’s headquarters in the second quarter of 2008.

Walker’s other accomplishments include managing the successful start-up of more than 80 ASA stations over five years to include service expansion to the West Coast and nine international markets, developing and implementing a ground equipment maintenance department that features a traveling shop that visits ASA stations quarterly, and managing the largest expansion in ASA’s history at Dallas-Fort Worth to include the addition of 57 daily departures and 11 new markets.

Rene Burdett Wilson
U.S. Marketing Director
Towers Perrin
Rene Burdett Wilson was recently promoted to U.S. marketing director for Towers Perrin, a global professional services firm that helps organizations improve their performance through effective people, risk and financial management.

In her new role, Wilson will oversee, and work with, regional marketing staffs to the U.S. to create and implement consistent marketing practices for the firm’s nearly 30 U.S. offices. Wilson will also continue to oversee marketing activity in the east region of the country as well as participate on the firm’s Intellectual Capital team.  She has also served on Towers Perrin’s corporate giving committee to develop a global framework for the firm’s corporate philanthropy.

An Atlanta native, Wilson strives to balance work, family and volunteer activities.  Currently, she serves as the co-chairwoman for community partners for Sutton Middle School, where she works with Buckhead businesses to support the classroom needs of Sutton’s teachers and students. She has also been involved with the Chastain Park Conservancy’s Celebration for Preservation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Woodruff Arts Center Global Gifts Committee. Wilson is a member of the American Marketing Association, the Board of Directors Network and All Saints’ Episcopal Church.

Amy J. Yoder
President
United Industries
Amy J. Yoder was named president of United Industries, a division of Spectrum Brands, in October 2007 and has 15 years experience in the consumer products and agribusiness industries.

Rayovac Corp. purchased United Industries in 2005, and the two companies took the Spectrum Brands name. United is a leading manufacturer and marketer of products for the consumer lawn-and-garden care and household insect control markets in North America and a major supplier of products to the pet supply industry.

She joined Spectrum in April 2007 as executive vice president, with responsibility for the company’s $675 million home and garden business segment, which comprises branded consumer products in lawn and plant growth, weed and insect control, and insect repellent markets.

Although with Spectrum for less than a year, her impact has been immense in several areas, including sales, marketing design and productivity. She implemented Overall Equipment Effectiveness, activity-based costing to improve productivity and efficiency. She instituted streamlining of freight and distribution, which resulted in on-time delivery improving to 95 percent while saving more than $3 million. She also has updated the appearance of the company’s packaging and switched packaging materials and packaging to reflect consumer trends and sustainability, changes that resulted in eight industry awards in 2007.