David M. Taggart.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: Balance sheet

David Taggart is a believer that chance, unintended meetings with people can often change the direction of where you thought you were going--and where you finally end up. For him, chance meetings set the direction of his education and career path, eventually steering him into the arena of international finance for a major globally branded company.

Title: President & Treasurer

Company: The Coca-Cola Company, the consumer products and beverages giant,

Born: Kansas, May 1951

Spouse: Married for 30 years to Dr. Ruth Berkelman, a medical doctor, professor at Emory University and retired from the Centers for Disease Control.

Children: Kim, 21, a senior at Princeton; John, 17, a junior in high school

Education: Princeton AB, 1973; Harvard Graduate School of Business, MBA, 1979

Career Summary: 1974-77, First National Bank of Boston, Boston, International Officer, Asia; credit responsibility for reviewing loans; 1980 to present, The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta. Treasury Specialist, then Manager of Foreign Exchange; 1986, Assistant Treasurer; 1989, headed The Coca-Cola Trading Co., a barter and counter-trade organization dealing with Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and China and Africa, traveling about 50 percent of the time; 1992, started a global procurement organization, merging it with the trading company; 1993-present, Treasurer.

FEI Chapter: Atlanta; Chair, FERF Board of Trustees, and serves on the Committee on Corporate Finance (CCF).

Leisure: "Bike riding, hiking, tennis, golf and attending the children's sports events (soccer, cross-country, rowing). We've got a few cabins on lakes--which end up to be 'working vacations.' For example, we just closed our 85-year old cottage in the California mountains for the winter. Surrounded by 150-year old trees, that involved some repairs. maintenance and cutting up trees to make firewood."

Time Management: "I basically try to keep to things that are scheduled, and not schedule, cancel and reschedule, I like meetings to start on time, keep on focus and not just run on with no tight endpoint. I'm not one to organize my day--don't have a 'to-do' list, but I do manage to get everything done."

Stress Management: "Running, working in the yard. Having an office job--a white-collar role, worried about accounting rules or Federal Reserve policy--doing something completely different is a break, and stress-reducing. Doing something physical, I'm usually able to get rid of stress...