Sister CEOs

Denise Morrison, Campbell Soup Co.'s next chief executive, has long enjoyed useful career advice from younger sister Maggie Wilderotter.  She happens to be CEO of publicly traded Frontier Communications Corp. 

Ms. Morrison, 57 years old, takes command of the food giant on Aug. 1, marking the first time that two sisters will run big U.S. public companies, according to Catalyst Inc., a nonprofit women's research group.

Thirteen months apart, the sisters are the eldest of four daughters, all of whom became executives.

Their father, an AT&T Inc. executive, talked to the girls about setting profit-margin goals while they were still in grade school.  Their mother taught them that ambition is a part of femininity.

They listened well.  Ms. Wilderotter has run Frontier, a regional telecom company, since 2004. Ms. Morrison joined Campbell in 2003, after working for several food-industry behemoths. She was its top North American soup official before being named last fall as CEO Doug Conant's successor.

The sisters helped each other throughout their careers, says Ms. Wilderotter. For instance, Ms. Wilderotter coached Ms. Morrison on landing her first corporate board seat. "I told her, 'Start smaller.  Don't go for a Fortune 500 board right out of the gate,''' Ms. Wilderotter recalls.

Early on, while a finance manager for a cable TV services start-up in the 1980s, Ms. Wilderotter sought Denise's guidance before taking over the marketing department because her sibling then was a Nestle SA marketing executive. "She took me through how to do (a marketing plan) on a shoestring, " Ms. Wilderotter says.  Her employer soon won a dominant market share.

The sisters have taken frequent six-miles walks since Campbell's announcement last fall, strolling quickly through neighborhoods near their homes in Princeton, N.J., and Darien, Conn. During those power walks, Ms. Wilderotter says she urged her sister to use different approaches in communicating with Campbell directors during her first year as CEO: monthly emails about business results, calls about key decisions such as geographic expansion and face-to-face sessions for personal feedback.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2011

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