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My Age. My Industry.

Top managers should recognize their own weak spots and make up for them by hiring strong, capable people who are encouraged to take risks

--- Michelle Peluso, age 35

CEO, Travelocity

Ranked 4th in Wall Street Journal's 50 Women to Watch in 2004

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Michelle Peluso - President and Chief Executive, Travelocity
By Melanie Trottman
full aticle by Yahoo! Finance

When Michelle Peluso was named president and chief executive of Travelocity, the nation's second-largest online travel agency, her appointment was particularly notable considering her age: 32.

But becoming the boss at the Southlake, Texas, unit of Sabre Holdings Corp. last year was just another notch on her belt. Before joining Travelocity, Ms. Peluso started and headed up her own company: last-minute travel seller Site59.com. Sabre hired her when it acquired the company in March of 2002, and Ms. Peluso quickly made herself a greater asset. As Travelocity's vice president of hotels, and then chief operating officer, Ms. Peluso spearheaded lucrative programs to sell discounted hotel rooms and air-and-hotel packages. Annual gross bookings rose nearly 12% in 2003 to $3.9 billion.

A third-generation entrepreneur, Ms. Peluso, now 33, was born in an upstate New York farm town and spent free time as an adolescent working at her grandparents' motel on Long Island. At 15, she started a nonprofit peace organization to help students from around the world understand different cultures.

Ms. Peluso did her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. From there, she earned a master's degree in philosophy, economics and politics at Oxford University in England. During the summer between her first and second years there, she traveled to Senegal to work with Citibank on a World Bank project to invest in local companies.

After Oxford, Ms. Peluso joined Boston Consulting Group, where she spent two years in New York and one in London. She rose quickly, moving through the associate, consultant and case-leader positions in three years, instead of the typical six to nine.

An interest in politics led Ms. Peluso to the White House next, where she became a fellow at age 26 and spent part of the yearlong program as a senior adviser to then-Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman. Boston Consulting Group kept asking her to return, but she wanted to try something entrepreneurial. Their solution: hand over their broadly conceived Site59.com idea so she could tailor it and make it her own.

Ms. Peluso says being a woman in male-dominated ranks has some pluses. "I always think successful leaders have the ability to wield different tools," she says. "As a woman, you can comfortably display a broader array of styles." She adds that women are sometimes more perceptive about what employees need and want.

Her management philosophy includes avoiding micromanaging, having brown-bag lunches with employees "all the time," and surrounding herself with great people. "I feel like there are a lot of people at Travelocity who are smarter than I am," she says. "And it's a wonderful feeling."

Teflon Day of Reckoning: Friday the 13th

As DuPont continues to make and use a cancer-causing Teflon chemical that pollutes nearly every American's blood, the public will now wait until Friday, January 13 to learn whether the EPA will hold the company accountable for covering up health and safety data for over 20 years. In the meantime, other agencies are investigating data from a DuPont whistleblower who says the company knew Teflon chemicals were leaching into food from packaging at unacceptable rates.

Did you know?

• SECRETLY IN YOUR FOOD:
  * If you eat fast food, you are ingesting TEFLON
  * Good Morning America reports 98% of Americans have been contaminated
  
  
• UNETHICAL EXPERIMENTATION:
  * DuPont had People/Dogs Smoke Teflon-Laced Cigarettes
  
  
• ANIMAL ABUSE:
  * DuPont forced Dogs to eat Teflon in "Scientific" study