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Pancake better: Julia Stewart couldn't pass up the opportunity to be chief executive of IHOP Corp. She was once a House of Pancakes waitress.

Article Excerpt
Julia Stewart

Title: Chief executive officer

Company: IHOP Corp.

Born: Visalia, 1955

Most Influential Person: Her father, Dan Stewart

Hobbies: Cooking, entertaining, wine collecting, snow skiing

Personal: Lives in Los Angeles with children, aged 10 and 8, and fiance Tim

JULIA Stewart, chief executive of IHOP Corp., is known as a turnaround artist. After choreographing a dramatic resurgence at Applebee's International Inc. during her three years running the company, she was recruited to do the same at the pancake house chain. She says that part of the reason she said yes was that her first job was serving food at a local House of Pancakes when she was 16. When she joined IHOP, she was the only woman running a publicly traded restaurant company; now there are several others. Stewart marched in and upended the franchise, changing the business model from one in which the corporation absorbed all construction costs, to one in which franchisees do most of the work and pay for it. The extra capital was reinvested into the company. Today, company stock trades at about $55 a share, more than twice the level when she took over the company. Stewart says that she isn't surprised at the way her life has turned out. Growing up in San Diego as the only child of two schoolteachers, she always dreamed of running a company. And after 14 years in a restaurant marketing career, Stewart joined a management program at Taco Bell, then owned by PepsiCo Inc. Starting as an assistant district manager in 1991, Stewart took on more and more territory, eventually overseeing the entire western region, including 6,000 restaurants, by 1998. These days Stewart, who's getting married next month, admits she still struggles to balance her demanding career and caring for her 8- and 10-year-old children. Because she loves her job, she says, her family and management team respect her.

Question: Has your gender made it hard for you to reach this level in your career?

Answer: When you get to the level of CEO, it's more about our your skills, your level of talent and capability than anything else. I think people really do want to make certain that you have the appropriate skill sets to lead and direct. But...

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