The Southern California Woman: ON THE JOB : MAKING IT : The Personal Stories of Six Women Who Have Found Success in Individual Ways : JILL BARAD : Corporation Executive

FIVE YEARS AGO, Jill Elikann Barad was in the delivery room, about to give birth to her second child, when she remembered a detail she had to tell one of her product managers at Mattel Toys for an upcoming presentation. She asked for a telephone and called her office. Then, after making a second business call, she promptly went into surgery, where her son Justin was delivered by Caesarean section. Five weeks later, Barad was on her way to the East Coast for the introduction of Mattel’s new product lines.

“I went to New York and was very concerned about everything,” recalls Barad, with a laugh. “I wanted my toys to be right, and I wanted my child to be taken care of.”

Such is the intertwining life and career of the 37-year-old woman who is executive vice president of Marketing, Worldwide Product Design and Development at the Hawthorne-based toy manufacturer. She is one of the highest-ranking female executives in corporate America. As one of four executive vice presidents at Mattel, Barad, who holds the company’s top marketing position, reports directly to Chairman and CEO John Amerman. Since joining Mattel in 1981, Barad has moved up the corporate ladder at a meteoric pace, especially considering how few corporate women--about 2% according to one study--are able to break through the so-called “glass ceiling” into upper management.

That she has been able to do so is a testament to both Barad’s talents and capacity for hard work, as well as the willingness of Mattel, a company that historically has had women in key positions, to ignore gender in its promotions. One supporter Barad has gained along the way is Amerman, who praises her “willingness and desire to go the extra mile.”

“She wouldn’t have gotten ahead if she hadn’t had special qualities,” Amerman adds. “She just understands our business, marketing and how to deal with people. You put that all together and it spells success.”

Today, Barad directs a staff of 500 employees and supervises Mattel’s product lines from design to marketing. From 1983 to 1986, she doubled sales of the company’s line of girls’ toys by introducing female action dolls, the first toys to appeal to little girls’ assertive side, she says. In fact, since Barad took over marketing functions for the company, Mattel has seen an 82% sales increase in the girls’ toys division. And all this while she’s maintained a 10-year marriage and reared sons Justin, 5, and Alexander, 9, albeit with the help of a live-in housekeeper.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female, Mattel looks at people for their ability to deliver on what the objectives are,” Barad notes. “I think that makes a whole lot of difference in a woman’s ability to manage a whole lot of things in her life.” If Barad’s journey into the ranks of upper management has been unusually speedy, it has also been unconventional, with detours for marriage, childbirth and a cross-country move. That hardly comes as a surprise from this striking ex-New Yorker, whose non-corporate approach to dressing for success also reflects her individualistic approach to her life and work.

Although she had planned on a career as an entertainer, Barad, daughter of a television producer father and artist mother, discovered her affinity for the business world when she began working part-time as a beauty consultant for Love Cosmetics in the early ‘70s, while still in college. She found that she liked the people, the products and the perks of working.

After a brief stint as a production assistant for producer Dino De Laurentiis, Barad went to Coty Cosmetics and became brand manager for its entire line in less than three years. She gave up the position to marry producer /personal manager Thomas Barad, and relocated to Los Angeles in 1978. Once here, she was hired by the Wells, Rich Greene advertising agency to handle the Max Factor account.

A year later, Barad became pregnant and left the agency to “put (my) energies into (my) new child.” After a year and a half of being at home, however, she grew restless and, with the help of a corporate headhunter, began searching for a new position that would combine her marketing skills with her fashion and cosmetics background. “Barbie” came immediately to mind, as did Mattel’s good reputation for hiring and promoting women. “The headhunter called Mattel,” Barad says simply. “I went there two days later and was hired a week later.”

Barad’s rise within the bulwark of the corporation has been steady ever since. After joining Mattel as a product manager, she was successively named marketing director, vice president of Marketing, senior vice president Marketing, Girls Toys /Pre-school Games; senior vice president of Product Development, vice president of Product Design and executive vice president of Product Design and Development, before being promoted to her current position last month.

Barad says she knew early on she’d found a company that would support her desire to “have it all.” Four months pregnant and showing, Barad had told the Mattel management group that she was expecting. Two weeks later, they promoted her to marketing director. “Once that happened,” she says, sitting at the large conference table in her office at Mattel corporate headquarters, an office decorated with family photos and a Barbie Ferrari, “I knew immediately that this was a place that was going to be supportive and nurturing in terms of talent.”

However, the company seems to have received a good deal in return for its support. During her tenure, Barad has been a persistent innovator, launching such successful, top-selling lines as the “Princess of Power,” “Rainbow Brite” and “Heart Family” dolls, as well as boosting market share for some of Mattel’s mainstays, such as Barbie. “I put a lot of myself into this job,” she says. “I don’t think I work harder than men, I just work hard.”

But Barad is self-effacing about her success, quick to attribute it to teamwork and her ability to motivate employees. She also says she has been fortunate over the years to have had several mentors to whom she’s been able to turn for advice.

Asked to describe her management style, Barad says it is uniquely her own, although she thinks her sensitivity and strong intuitive side, as well as her use of constructive feedback, have been pluses. She is convinced that these skills translate to both management and motherhood.

Reaching back to her childhood, Barad says she learned these basic values from her parents. She also credits her parents with providing a “creative” household with a lot of mental stimulation. “For me, it was put like: ‘You can be anything you want to be--just be good at it,’ ” Barad recalls of the message sent by her father. “Put your mind to it, learn what you need to and go for it!”

Like many executive women of the ‘80s, Barad plays down being a woman in terms of her success or failure. She says she’s lucky never to have experienced sexism in her career. “Not that I know that a lot of it doesn’t happen . . . but I just have the attitude that I’m responsible for me,” she says.

Last year, Barad was touted by Business Week as one of 50 executive women to watch as possible CEO material. Meanwhile, she has learned to balance 12-hour days and a demanding career that requires a lot of travel with a rich family life. She’s been helped by having a supportive family--”great kids” and a husband willing to help shoulder the demands of child-rearing--as well as a full-time, live-in housekeeper to run her Pacific Palisades home. But that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t had to make some tough choices.

Once, Barad walked into her son’s third-grade classroom for a parent-teacher meeting and was greeted by her son’s teacher, who exclaimed: “Oh, so Alexander really does have a mother!”

“You feel awful,” she admits. “But if you want to grow both parts of your life, there are times when you have to make concessions to both and you just try to make the priorities the things that really matter.” Barad says she and her husband try to make sure that at least one of them is there for the important moments with their children.

She also tries to involve her sons in her career, bringing them into the company for toy testing, interesting them in her frequent trips to the Orient (where Mattel’s toys are manufactured) and making it clear that her career benefits them as well.

There have been trade-offs, but Barad says she has learned to live with them.

“I don’t think it’s any different than what fathers have always been up against,” she says. “The things you lose are moments to yourself, or for yourself, but you try to live with those priorities.”