Multi-tasking and focused: Mary Jo Green; As Mary Jo Green steps up as volunteer chair for FEI, it represents a change in leadership--placing a woman in the top role for only the second time in its 73-year history.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: FEI Chairs

The finance profession is changing, and Financial Executives International (FEI) is changing with it. For the first time in its history, last year FEI named Colleen Sayther CEO and President. At the same time, FEI Canada also hired a woman CEO and President, Isabel Meharry, as well as electing Stephanie Coldwell as its volunteer chair.

Mary Jo Green's tenure as chair-from 2004-5 follows the only other woman volunteer chair, Penelope Flugger, who served from 1995 to 1996.

FEI is changing substantially," says Green. "When I first joined FEI, there were few women at any meetings," she adds. At that time, few females had the opportunity to be CFOs or CEOs of corporations, but now quite a few are moving up the ranks, she explains. An economics major in undergraduate school, Green says she was the sole woman in many of her classes. Now, with many more women pursuing business careers, she says, "There will continue to be more women in business; it's just a matter of how long it will take." But, she adds, "I know we are heading in the right direction."

Women account for 10 percent of FEI's members, and Green says she hopes to raise that figure, beginning as part of her goal to further diversify FEI's membership.

Green is definitely high-energy and high-performance, quick-spoken, yet thoughtful. Born in New Jersey, she says she has never had to look for a job in her 34-year career. Currently Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Sony Corp. of America in New York City, she says she got her past positions as a result of someone calling and alerting her to the opportunity. She'd go to some interviews to look, never certain she wanted to move. "I've always been happy in what I was doing--I've been very lucky throughout my career," she says.

Green received her BA in economics and MBA from Rutgers in 1969 and 1970, respectively--having financed her own education through scholarships and part-time work. She began her career in the accounting department of retailer McCrory Corp., then joined American Cyanamid Co., in the budgeting department and later the accounting department. She moved to Schering-Plough Corp. in several positions of increasing responsibility in the treasury department, and then to Pitney Bowes Inc., rising to Vice President and Treasurer. In 2001, she joined Sony with responsibility for cash management, bank relationships, hedging foreign exchange and interest rate exposures, asset management relating to pension fund management and...