Christine Russell.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: Balance sheet - Virage Logic Inc. - Interview

Christine Russell is inspired by the elegance of simplicity--distilling a complex environment or process down to something understandable. Consider a professional athlete, she says. "They have the gift of making an incredibly difficult action look easy" (think hitting home runs out of the ballpark or an Olympic gymnast dismounting the pommel horse).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Title: CFO

Company: Virage Logic Inc., a market leader in providing advanced embedded memory intellectual property (IP) for the design of complex integrated circuits.

Born: Aug. 13, 1949

Spouse: Married to Jim Russell, for 24 years. Jim is principal of Del Mar High School in San Jose, Calif. He ran for California State Assembly in a purely grass roots campaign (read: no money) and lost, but it was fascinating to go through the process.

Pets: a cat named Duke (after John Wayne)

Education Summary: BA, Santa Clara University 1971; MBA, Santa Clara University, 1983

Career Summary: Have held a variety of positions at Silicon Valley technology companies, including CFO at three public companies; led two IPOs and two follow-on equity offerings; sourced and negotiated venture capital and strategic financing; drove the acquisition process, as purchaser and target. Companies: OuterBay Technologies Inc., Ceva Inc., Persistence Software Inc., Cygnus Solutions, Valence Technology Inc., Shugart Corp. (Xerox), Measurex Corp. (Honeywell).

Board of Directors: Peak International Ltd., Audit Committee Chair; QuickLogic Corp., Audit Committee Chair

FEI Chapter: Silicon Valley Chapter, Past President and currently FEI Western Area Regional Director

Leisure: Hiking, camping, skiing (badly) and vacations to see wildlife in nature, such as Africa; Costa Rica; Churchill, Canada; Alaska. A particular thrill was hiking in to see mountain gorillas in Uganda.

Time Management: Prioritize, delegate and focus.

Stress Management: Humor (in a corporate crisis). I always advise my staff not to panic--"since no one is dead, and if they are, it's too late anyway"; exercising (cardio kickboxing, step, weights); and thinking of our beach Lake Tahoe and Napa condos. And while I don't get to either of them very often, it's nice to know I could be there in an hour if I wanted to (even though I'm mostly kidding myself).

Recently-read book: Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed and the Fall of Arthur Andersen, by Barbara Ley Toffler. It's a perfect illustration of how a culture can change insidiously over time for the...