Power: The 100 Women Who Run This Town (continued)
81
Jane Lundquist
49, President and COO, Cambridgeport Bank
There are 19 female bank presidents in this state. But there's only one who heads up one of the major players, a bank with more than $1 billion in assets: former Arthur Andersen accountant Jane Lundquist. Under Lundquist's watch, Cambridgeport Bank, which has 11 branches, has seen its stock price soar from $29.75 to nearly $50 in just the last year.
82
Deborah C. Jackson
51, CEO, American Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay
Since she took over the local Red Cross just four months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Jackson, a former vice president of both the Boston Foundation and Children's Hospital, has committed her resources to local causes – even in wartime. The nation's 10th-largest Red Cross chapter (out of nearly 1,000), her organization reaches out to a quarter million individuals annually – from flood victims to the victims of an estimated 300 fires a year – in 78 cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts.
83
Pamela D. A. Reeve
53, CEO, Lightbridge
Christine M. Cournoyer
51, President and COO, Lightbridge
Lightbridge, which supplies software and communications technology, has several high-level women, including the two powerhouses at the top: Reeve, who's been at Lightbridge since 1989, and Cournoyer, an IBM veteran who joined the team last year. How powerful is this company? Back in 1991, Lightbridge had 12 employees and $1 million in annual revenue. Now it has around 700 employees, with $134 million in revenue – and that's in the thick of a recession that's pummeling the telecommunications market. Forty percent of every wireless transaction made in North America – from cell phone calls to text messaging – flows through a Lightbridge system.
84
Swanee Hunt
53, Director, Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government
Hunt has all the makings of a quintessential left-wing activist. She comes from wealth. (Her father, the late Dallas oilman H. L. Hunt, at one time the richest man in the world.) She writes lefty editorials for papers in Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, and here in Boston. As a former ambassador to Austria, she wields some power inside the Beltway, where she's now battling Bush as head of the Women Waging Peace initiative. And at the Kennedy School she's busy shaping minds as head of a program that's pushing women's agendas in public policy.
85
Janice T. Bourque
46, President and CEO, Massachusetts Biotechnology Council
A former veterinary student who has completed stints at NASA and a Big Four accounting firm, Bourque was the Massachusetts Biotech Council's first paid employee when she was hired in 1992 as administrative director. Today she oversees a staff of 15, and has a $4 million annual budget to advocate for the fast-growing biotech sector. Last year, the nearly 400-member council issued a report calling on the state to step up its support of biotech startups. The document caught the attention of Mitt Romney, who named Bourque to his gubernatorial transition team.
86
Florastine Creed
56, Superintendent, Boston Police Department
Creed was the first black woman ever appointed sergeant detective in Boston (1988), the first to make the rank of deputy superintendent (1994), and the first to be named superintendent (1998). She's now the department's highest-ranking woman, along with fellow superintendent Anne Marie Doherty, who's about to retire. A lawyer, Creed runs the administrative hearings office. If you're a cop in Boston and you screw up, you have to answer to her.
87
Elaine Schuster
71, Democratic fundraiser, philanthropist
“In fundraising, an awful lot of people make promises – and a lot of those people fall short,” says Steve Grossman, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But Schuster “keeps her commitments and gets the job done with style.” The estimated $10 million Schuster has collected has been lavished on the likes of President Bill and Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry – though Kerry reportedly alienated Schuster last summer by siding with activists against her husband, Gerald, in his battle with a labor union representing workers at the nursing homes the couple owns. Although Schuster – who has also given generously to Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Franciscan Children's Hospital, and the Boston Public Library – has not publicly lashed out at Kerry, she cohosted a soiree that netted $100,000 for potential presidential rival Howard Dean.
88
Jill Kneerim
64, Codirector, Kneerim & Williams at Fish & Richardson
Along with entertainment lawyer John Taylor “Ike” Williams, Kneerim runs the largest literary agency in New England. The duo represents a huge stable of eminent writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning historians David Herbert Donald and Joseph J. Ellis, Brad Meltzer (who's being called “the next John Grisham”), former U.S. poet laureate and Boston University professor Robert Pinsky, and dozens of others (including, in the interest of full disclosure, the very talented writers at this magazine).
89
Sarah Cardozo Duncan
51, President, the Alliance
Cardozo Duncan has made a career of helping people – women, mainly – increase their influence and economic power. She runs her own consulting firm (careerstrategist.com), but her clout stems from her role as president of the Alliance, an umbrella group of women's associations that collectively claim about 13,000 members in greater Boston. The groups run the gamut from the New England Women Business Owners to the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts to the Boston Club.
90
Mona Eliassen
44, Founder and CEO, Eliassen Group
Eliassen wields the kind of power you might not recognize until you need it – very, very badly. She started her company, an IT staffing and consulting firm, back in 1989 out of a spare bedroom, with the help of her sister Lisa (hence the Mona Lisa corporate logo). Today, she runs a $50 million business with offices in Cambridge, Wakefield, and North Carolina, and nearly 450 clients, ranging from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. Big-hitter customers include Fleet, Fidelity, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Imagine what would happen if all those computers went down.
91
Gretchen Monahan
32, Founder and Owner, Grettacole, Gretta Luxe, and G-Spa
Tired of seeing the words “Gretchen” and “Monahan” next to each other in this magazine? The pint-sized arbiter of beauty is making herself tough to ignore. She's quickly fashioning an empire with her growing chain of high-end beauty salons/ spas/boutiques, including the G-Spa, a new hybrid spa/salon for quick in-and-out service on Newbury Street. Monahan's chain seems likely to make over not only its growing list of clients but also Boston's central shopping street itself.
92
Elizabeth Altman
36, Vice President and Director of Business Development, Personal Communications Sector, Motorola
Altman works in Motorola's Cambridge office, conveniently located near MIT, where she earned master's degrees in engineering and management. (Motorola and MIT work on various projects together.) Though you could write a master's thesis yourself on exactly what she does, suffice it to say that she heads up a section – of the second-largest cell phone company on earth – that focuses on the future of cell phone business worldwide. It's a rare niche where the boardroom meets the laboratory.
93
Giovanna Negretti
32, Executive Director, ¿Oiste?
Although the head of the state's first Hispanic political organization failed to rally enough votes in November to defeat the hotly contested Question 2, which called for eliminating bilingual education, she did make her presence known. Hispanic voter turnout rose by 41 percent over 1998 in Boston and nearly doubled elsewhere in the state. Asked whether Governor Mitt Romney returns her calls, her feisty reply is, “Not yet.”
94
Bonnie Black
Conductor, Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras
Conductor of the prestigious youth program's Preparatory String Orchestra and artistic director and conductor of its Intensive Community Program, Black works with the children of the area's elite and also with inner-city kids who don't usually have the chance to be trained in classical music. A former master teacher at the Harlem School of the Arts, which inspired the movie Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep, she has sent her students on to perform at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and other impressive venues across the country.
95
Debi Greenberg
47, Owner, Louis Boston
Since Greenberg officially bought her father's business in January, you might have noticed a few changes. A disc jockey spins tunes on weekends. Antiques and gourmet foods have taken the place of the menswear section on the first floor. Notable chefs pop up to cook for customers. As she remakes one of this city's most exclusive clothing stores, Greenberg is changing the way Boston's upper crust shops.
96
Maria Cirino
39, CEO, Guardent
A former top exec at the companies that would become Intel and Razorfish, Cirino struck out on her own three years ago and with two partners started Guardent. Good timing. The Waltham-based business, which specializes in information services security in an era of viruses and terrorists, is the area's second-fastest-growing private company based on growth in revenue, which is expected to reach $30 million this year – up 650 percent since 2000. Guardent is now taking on the big boys, backed by the likes of Axxon Capital, whose founding partner is fellow power listee Sheryl Marshall. Cirino has emerged as a national expert on antiterrorism computer network security. She also sits on the boards of the Massachusetts Software & Internet Council and Entrepreneurs Foundation of New England.
97
Nancy Lo
40, Election Commissioner, City of Boston
Lo is so tough she was once called “Dragon Lady” by a city council member. (Said councilor was immediately rebuked by pro-Lo Chinatown business and religious leaders, who charged that she was anti-Asian.) When Lo's own employees asked for protection against vicious dogs and drug dealers while canvassing for voters door-to-door, Lo derided them as whiners. City councilors still complain that Lo is unresponsive to them, but she almost always gets the last word. After all, she's in charge of the elections. . . .
98
Shirley Singleton
51, Founder and CEO, Edgewater Technology
Singleton's tech firm started with 10 people in Edgewater Office Park in Wakefield. (It took the name Edgewater so people would think it owned the whole park.) Today, she employs 200 people and works with companies including big tech hitters IBM and Microsoft, creating custom software solutions for such clients as the U.S. Postal Service, MIT, Harvard and Northeastern universities, and American Express.
99
Chobee Hoy
70, Owner, Chobee Hoy Associates Real Estate
The ubiquitous Hoy has built a fortune selling houses through her thriving Brookline Village real estate boutique. She's also volunteered her leadership to and bestowed largess on Brookline High School, the Brookline Arts Center, the Brookline Public Library, and the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Though she's past the age of retirement, she shows no signs of slowing down: This summer, Hoy will take over as chair of Brookline's chamber of commerce.
100
Mary Kelley
59, Executive Director, Massachusetts Cultural Council
Kelley manages more than $9 million in funding for the arts (the majority of which is from the state), shared by almost 500 cultural organizations in all 351 Massachusetts cities and towns. Which has to count for something. It didn't count enough for her to fend off a mind-boggling 62 percent state budget cut last year, however – the worst hit suffered by any state arts agency in the country.
Also contributing to this story were Sarah Adams, Michael Blanding, James Burnett, Jon Marcus, Welling Savo, and Lena Watts.