Christie Hefner.

• Author: PORTER, MARTIN
• Position: MarketWatch.com

This Internet pioneer is the 'go-to' director recruit for MarketWatch.com, which has ambitions to be the 'go-to, financial Web site.

WHEN SHE WAS a student attending Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., during the 1970s, Christie Hefner spent a couple of summers working in editorial positions at Playboy. In contemplating her future, she certainly didn't see herself pursuing a full-time career there, let alone running the publishing company founded by her father, Hugh Hefner, in 1953. Law seemed to be more to her liking.

All of that changed after graduating summa cum laude with a degree in English and American Literature. She moved back to Chicago, and went to work with the idea that she would stay at Playboy for a spell before pursuing her interest in a legal career. "I never did make it to law school," Hefner tells DIRECTORS & BOARDS during a recent visit with her in her New York office on Fifth Avenue near Central Park, where Playboy's publishing operations are based. (Its corporate headquarters are still in Chicago.)

Following a career counselling session with her father, she was encouraged to join the magazine -- but on the business side. Eight years later, in 1982, she was occupying the president's chair, and in 1988 she succeeded her father in becoming Playboy's chief executive.

Hefner's career in corporate governance began in 1979 when she became a director of Playboy. After nearly 15 years serving on Playboy's board, Hefner accepted her first outside directorship at Sealy Corp., a Chicago-based mattress manufacturer, where she served on the board from 1993-1997. Three years after leaving the Sealy board, Hefner became a director of Telocity Inc., a high-speed Internet services company, which was acquired by DirecTV earlier this year. In April 2001 she joined the board of MarketWatch.com.

Founded in 1997, MarketWatch.com is an interactive financial media company with $53 million in revenues. It operates three financial Web sites and produces syndicated news reports distributed by broadcast and print media. It is publicly traded, although CBS Broadcasting Inc. and the Financial Times/Pearson organization are majority owners, each with a one-third stake in the company.

In the keynote address at the March 2001 Comdex computer trade show in Chicago, CEO Larry Kramer said his goal is to make MarketWatch.com "the No. 1 financial Web site on the Internet." According to Kramer, each page on the site logs 15 million views per day, and those...