When it comes to holding top corporate positions in Colorado, women claim only 7 percent of the jobs.
“There is clearly a strong glass ceiling,” said Sarah Anderson, an executive pay analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
Out of the 507 executive positions reviewed in the 2014 Colorado compensation survey, women held 35 of them, according to proxy data provided by S&P Capital IQ.
Lauren Brlas, chief financial officer at Newmont Mining Corp., was Colorado’s highest-paid female executive at the end of last year. She made just under $5.4 million in 2014, up from $4.9 million in 2013.
That ranked her 48th among the more than 500 pay packages surveyed. The survey looked only at companies active at the end of 2014 and didn’t include TW Telecom, which folded into Level 3 Communications in October.
Outgoing TW Telecom CEO Larissa Herda, for years the state’s highest profile female executive, popped a $42 million on her way out.
For Anderson, those kinds of mega-payouts track with her research that shows when it comes to getting whatever they can, justified or not, or messing up when compensation incentives aren’t properly aligned, women don’t behave much differently than men. “Among the women who have broken through, there aren’t examples of them behaving much differently than the typical male CEO,” she said.
The state’s next highest-paid female executive after Brlas last year was Margaret Kelly, CEO of Re/Max Holdings, who received $4.5 million in compensation.
Like Herda, she didn’t finish out the year, resigning unexpectedly in December. That left Lynn Powers, CEO of Gaiam, as the only female chief executive of a Colorado public company in the survey.
