Women Rising in Corporate Ranks

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The prospects for ambitious women in the District are brighter than in other regions in the country, according to Catalyst, which reported that at the two Fortune 500 firms based in the nation's capital, the Federal National Mortgage Association (better known as Fannie Mae) and Danaher Corp., more than a third -- 38.6 percent -- of corporate officers are women.

"Corporate America has awakened to the notion that it can't afford to waste talent," said Jamie S. Gorelick, Fannie Mae's vice chairman, one of three female vice chairmen in the United States. "We get a tremendous amount out of women who are senior executives at our company. There's a critical mass of us."

Gorelick said that such "critical mass" is essential for women to have enough of a "comfort level" to move forward aggressively in their own careers. She credited Fannie Mae's chairman, Franklin D. Raines, and former chairman Jim Johnson with instituting recruitment and retention policies targeting women.

"You can't be successful in this arena without the chief executive voicing it and making it clear," Gorelick said. "Otherwise people just give lip service to the concept but you get no results."