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Excerpts from Cracking the Corporate Code

Ed Howard was offered the position of vice president and director of Investor Relations when he was director of Merchandise for the Geographic Division of J .C. Penney, but he did not immediately recognize it as a development job. "At the time, I was totally unaware of the importance of the offer. I didn't even know the position existed prior to the offer. They called me one day and described an 'opportunity' and what they needed out of it. I told them, 'I'm not your guy, because I don't know the slightest thing about investor relations, dealing with Wall Street and major stockholders."

"Then they informed me I'd be a vice president. That would make me the first black vice president in the history of the company. And their reasoning for selecting me was good. They wanted someone who'd been in a line position, because everyone on the finance side understood the finances but fell on their faces when they tried to explain what the stores were doing. It was a nightmare. Some of the explanations I heard about why we were doing certain things had no rhyme or reason whatsoever. They needed someone who knew stores, knew the retail side of the business, and they had a finance staff to teach me what I needed to know to get by with the investment community.

"I realized later Vernon Jordan probably had something do with the offer. He was the head of the board's Personnel Committee. And believe me, it was a tremendous experience. It gave me a perspective I'd never even thought about. Wall Street asked questions mainly about what was going on in the stores, but they could ask you about anything in the company. So you had to stay abreast of everything that was happening. No one was feeding you the information. You just had to keep in communication. You visited, you had lunch with people in different positions, so you knew what was going on. I could go anywhere and meet with anyone, and I did.