I am the chairperson for my board, and my CEO and CFO sit on the board, the heads of the different business units sit on the board. And when we come into the meeting to make decisions about which projects we should be investing in and how we should deploy capital to the different requests that are coming to us, we work from a truly enterprise-level perspective. We don't bring into the table our silo, functional area hat.

I read about how you made a decision to bring an outsourced IT solution in-house, back into the company that you were working for then. How did you manage that?
When you walk into an organization, the first thing that I tend to do is really to assess relationships with my internal peers, partners and also relationships with vendors. What is it you're getting for the money that you spend? If you don't have a sense of a relationship that is truly a partnership, that they're there just for the short-term to make a lot of money, not there long-term to help me deliver the best solutions, you know that the vendor is not a partner. And that's the situation I found in the company that I joined.

I looked at the outsourcing agreement that we had and it wasn't working. It wasn't working for anybody. We were not achieving the results, we were constantly going back to the contract and looking at the terms and conditions of the contract to try and get them to give us refunds, to try to get them to do things for us that were not spelt out properly. I felt that the best outcome would be to cut the cord, and to let the organization go back to doing its own internal development and its own internal infrastructure support.

It was actually not too difficult because the people who had moved from the organization to the outsourcer, had remained with the outsourcer. Bringing them back was actually something they had been looking forward to doing. And when I brought them back, they had this extra incentive to be successful because they didn't like being on the other side. They couldn't do what they needed to do to support the company because they were bound by the terms and conditions of the contract.

From your experience, what advice would you give to companies who want to outsource?
I'm outsourcing right now. The best advice I can give is just because you outsource, you don't ever abdicate your responsibilities. You continue to manage your outsourcer very closely. You make them a part of your day-to-day organization. When you walk away, you give up the ability to achieve the outcomes you were looking for.

You're a rarity in a male-dominated world. Have you faced any challenges that came as a result of your gender?
Very often, during work events, I would be one of few women surrounded by men. But I've never limited myself. Sometime women put limits on themselves and that holds them back.

Today, there are a lot of young women that have achieved a lot. Back in 1970 when I first started, I was definitely considered a rarity, and I was frowned upon. But I said I was going to move away, to the United States, and not have a traditional lifestyle. It was very radical at that time.

Zurich (where Claudio had once worked)… is a country that has still a lot of hang-ups about women who are in charge. It was tough, it was difficult. Soon after I got in, the local newspaper wrote about my management style… it was not expected to have a woman at this high level, who has a management style that is focused on accountability, results, delivery and achieving what you said you were going to achieve. So they were sort of shocked that a woman could have that kind of management style that was only expected of men.

There were some drawbacks but you're given a set of goals and you have your metrics that you're managed by. And at the end of the day, it's a business.

I understand that your other half (Yahoo's Lars Rabbe) is also a CIO.
My better half (laughs).

Because our careers had developed very much in the same way, we have not lived together for a long time. We were living in different parts of the world. When I was in Zurich, he was in California. We would see each other every two to three months, so we've had to make some personal sacrifices.

My career is very important to me. I knew that early on when I grew up in Portugal, that I needed a different type of profile from the peers whom I grew up with. So I looked for a partner who understood that and gave me the space and the support that helped me achieve what I wanted to achieve.

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