What a difference a year makes.
In 2006, Angela F. Braly was not on the list of the Wall Street Journal’s 50 Women to Watch. This year, she’s number one.
The president and CEO of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc., Braly finished higher than better-known business leaders.
Indra Nooyi, the chairman and CEO of Pepsico, was ranked number two on the list, which was announced yesterday. Anne Mulcahy, chairman and CEO of Xerox Corp., was placed at number seven.
The Journal makes a strong case for the 46-year-old Braly, whose appointment as CEO was announced in February.
She had been serving as corporate general counsel and government affairs strategist at WellPoint, but she was seen as a surprise choice for the top job.
“Women are out there working very hard, although not necessarily promoting themselves in the same way as some (male) colleagues,” she said. “So when we pop up, people say, ‘Oh that’s surprising, you came out of nowhere.’”
The Journal writes that Braly “has become arguably the most powerful woman in corporate America this year.”
She leads a company with 46,000 employees, the largest health insurer in the country. The company’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plans have $60 billion in annual sales and 35 million members in 14 states, concluding New York and California.
A graduate of Southern Methodist University’s school of law, Braly (whose name is pronounced Brah-lee), was a partner in a St. Louis and Kansas City law firm when she became interim general counsel for RightCHOICE Managed Care Inc., the parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield in Missouri in 1997.
She soon became the permanent general counsel and stayed on as CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield Missouri when WellPoint Health Networks acquired RightCHOICE in 2002.
In 2004, Braly advised WellPoint in its eventual merger with Anthem Inc., another large health insurer.
She then moved to WellPoint’s corporate offices in Indianapolis to serve as general counsel.
This year, she succeeded Larry Glasscock as CEO and president. He remains chairman of WellPoint’s board. Braly’s salary as CEO is reported to be $1.1 million.
Soon after she took over as CEO, Braly began showing up on lists of women with influence.
She was fourth in Fortune’s list of 50 Most Powerful Women 2007, behind Pepsico’s Nooyi, Xerox’s Mulcahy and Meg Whitman, the president and CEO of eBay.
And Braly occupied the 16th spot on Forbes’s list of the 100 Most Powerful Women throughout the world.
The profiles that accompany these lists stress that because the majority of a family’s health-care decisions are made by women, Braly has an advantage in her job.
At the same time, the profiles work hard to show that Braly — perhaps like the stereotypical male health-care executive — is not all sentiment.
“I like to characterize her as soccer mom on one hand and Napoleonic solider on the other,” one former WellPoint executive tells the Journal. “Some people get fooled, and they don’t perceive her as tough, but she is.”
One of Braly’s toughest tasks so far may have been picking up the pieces after the forced resignation of David Colby, WellPoint’s chief financial officer. Colby left at the end of May, right before Braly took office as CEO on June 1.
The company said that Colby, who had been a contender for the CEO’s office, had violated the company’s code of conduct.
Later, it emerged that two different women, one who has alleged sexual battery, the other who has demanded a house she said he promised her, have sued Colby. Other women have said that he had promised to marry them.
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