Secrets of her success

"Petrobras is a very successful company, completely male-dominated," Maria das Graças Silva Foster told the FT's Women at the Top Conference in November 2011. "But things are changing and it's just question of time."

A question of just two months, in fact. On Monday, the Brazilian company's gas and energy director was named as the next chief executive of, in the FT's words, "arguably Latin America's most important company".

Her promotion will also make her, by a long shot, the most prominent businesswoman in Latin America, and a symbol of the diversity policy of Brazil's first woman president Dilma Rousseff – who used to chair Petrobras and is said to be close to Ms Graças Foster. The president appears to be lining up another Brazilian businesswoman - Luiza Helena Trajano Inácio Rodrigues, who heads the retailer Magazine Luiza – to become a minister for small business. But the number of top female CEOs in Brazil still looks low compared with, say, India or China.

The Petrobras CEO-elect talked at length about the increasing power of Brazilian women at the same FT conference. She came across as a strong proponent of meritocratic promotion, arguing that the sheer demand for skilled labour in the fast-growing Brazilian economy made the rise of women to managerial and technical positions inevitable and indispensable. "Diversity shouldn't be treated as a new cult but [viewed] in the cold light of business strategy," she said.

Asked later in the session about balancing work and family – her daughter, who was two when she joined Petrobras, now has a daughter of 16 herself – Ms Graças Foster dismissed the idea of trying to set priorities in advance:

I love my kids, I love my granddaughter and when I'm with them… I'm completely dedicated to them and when I'm in my office, I love my office. I don't remember that I have a husband, that's the point… Dedicate yourself to that moment.

(Published by Financial Times - January 24, 2012)