The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business

摘要

The day Debby Hopkins blew into Lucent, Jim Lusk intended to despise her. Lucent's interim chief financial officer for a stretch this year, Lusk was the guy due to get the top financial job if Chief Executive Rich McGinn failed to recruit, as he hoped, "one of America's ten top CFOs." McGinn got the girl, and Lusk was irked. "I really wanted to hate her," Lusk says about "Hurricane Debby," so-called by some who have felt her force. In 16 months at Boeing, Hopkins had swept out the finance staff, manhandled the top brass, meddled with everything, and got a lot of press for improving the aerospace giant's stock price. So when she arrived in May, Lusk was dreading their two-hour introductory one-on-one. "I walked in with my list of 40 business things to discuss," he recalls. "We didn't cover any of them. The entire time she talked about me and what she would do to support me. That floored me. In five minutes she had my career in her hands. It was stunning."