Her policy is ensuring the numbers add up.

• Position: People - Biography

Every three months, Theresa Stone finds herself on a conference call pitted against a hostile crowd of faceless industry analysts. It's the quarterly earnings announcement, and Stone must deliver Jefferson-Pilot Corp.'s numbers--good or bad. "There are 60 people on the other end of the phone with their spreadsheets out, waiting to outguess you, and you have to guide them through the information you've given them," she says.

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Such are the demands on the chief financial officer of a public company. Stone, 59, is the top number cruncher at Greensboro-based JP, one of the nation's largest insurance companies. She also is president of its Jefferson-Pilot Communications Co. subsidiary. And in August, the Federal Reserve System board of governors appointed her a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The bank, along with 11 others nationwide, helps set U.S. monetary policy. Stone will serve on the nine member board, which meets monthly, through the end of 2004.

It's not the career the Boston native envisioned when she graduated in 1966 from Wellesley College with a bachelor's in French literature. Stone wanted to be a French professor, so she enrolled at Cornell University to pursue her doctorate. But in the early 1970s, feminist philosophy was gaining popularity and altering how women saw themselves professionally...