Female CEOs say dad's advice helped them shatter glass ceiling

As a girl growing up in Elberon, N.J., Denise Morrison, future CEO of Campbell Soup Co. in Camden, got a business education from her father.

An executive at AT&T, Dennis Sullivan brought home models of the Princess Trimline phone, and talked to Denise and her three younger sisters at dinner about product development and marketing. He described new assignments, and taught them to write business plans when they wanted something new, like a bicycle, that included the costs of different models.

"He was educating us about so many things, from pay for performance to the importance of changing jobs often to gain broad experience," said Morrison, 61, who worked at a half-dozen consumer-products companies, including PepsiCo and Nestle, before joining Campbell in 2003. "He said he saw the world opening up for women, and wanted us to be prepared." (Morrison's sister Maggie Wilderotter is chairwoman and former CEO of Frontier Communications.)

Father's Day, celebrated Sunday, gives businesswomen like Morrison and General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra an occasion to remember and salute their dads for teaching them important lessons about how to succeed in a world where females hold only about 14 percent of senior executive jobs and are CEOs at just 23 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

All children are shaped by their parents, but a father can have a particularly weighty influence on a daughter's career path, said Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital. "For girls who have interests and aspirations in areas that are traditionally male, a father's confidence in them can be very helpful" and counters the bias that "if you're an assertive female, you're somehow too aggressive," she said.

Barra said her father encouraged her interest in cars and science and her decision to work at GM. Her father, Ray Makela, worked for 39 years as a die maker at GM's plant in Pontiac, Mich., retiring just as Barra joined the company as an 18-year-old intern.

Whenever her father brought home a vehicle from his plant, Barra, 53, spent hours exploring it. "That was a big part of my life growing up, being excited about new cars," she said.

Debra Cafaro, CEO of Ventas Inc., a Chicago-based real estate investment trust, said her father, a Pittsburgh mailman, made sure she was the first in her family to attend college. He worked a second job collecting and selling rare coins to raise enough money to pay for her to attend the University of Notre Dame. "My father always supported me and said, 'You can do whatever you put your mind to,' " said Cafaro, 57. "Looking back, I realize how incredibly unusual and important his constant support and reinforcement were," especially when there were hardly any female executives or law partners.