Commerce Dept. Nominee Called Savvy, Driven : Cabinet: Barbara Hackman Franklin is one of Harvard’s first female Business School graduates. She is dedicated to the advancement of women.

In 1988, when Barbara Hackman Franklin served on the George Bush campaign’s Republican convention team, she would arrive every morning for staff meetings carrying a plastic bag filled with bran flakes and prunes.

While her colleagues gorged on the daily spread of sweet rolls and coffee, she would pour skim milk into the bag and eat her cereal with a plastic spoon.

“It would have been easy to grab the junk food like the rest of us, but Barbara never goes for the easy solution,” said Bobbie Greene Kilberg, who attended those meetings and now serves as a deputy assistant to President Bush for public liaison. “She’s very organized. Those meetings interfered with her regular breakfast--so she brought it with her.”

Kilberg and others who have known Franklin for years describe the commerce secretary nominee as very savvy, very driven and--as evidenced by her dedication to healthful foods--very disciplined. Along those same lines, she is also a physical fitness enthusiast who lifts weights, swims and goes on “very vigorous, outdoorsy” vacations with her husband, Wallace Barnes, who heads an aerospace manufacturing firm in Connecticut. The couple live both in Bristol, Conn., and Washington.

Franklin, who has an undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University, was one of the first women to graduate from the Harvard Business School. Friends say that she cares deeply about helping women make it in the corporate world and has spent more than two decades working toward that end.

“She likes to assist younger women . . . up the corporate ladder,” Kilberg said, adding that Franklin has been very active in the National Women’s Economic Alliance, an organization that promotes women in business. “Within the alliance, she put together a very successful program to get more women on corporate boards.”

Franklin, who grew up in Lancaster County, Pa., and still votes in that state, was appointed to her first high-profile Washington job more than 20 years ago when she joined the Richard M. Nixon White House as a women’s recruiter.

Her commitment was evident even then. The diminutive Franklin said in a 1971 interview with The Times: “If a woman is qualified, she should hold any job in government she wants. And I’m going to go out and find those women.”

Virginia Knauer, who served as consumer affairs adviser to President Nixon, described Franklin as an early and active member of Executive Women in Government, a bipartisan organization for women in policy-making posts formed by former Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, then a member of the Federal Trade Commission, and others.

“She performed beautifully in all the jobs she had,” Knauer said. “And she made friends wherever she was.”

Franklin, who currently runs her own Washington management consulting firm, is no stranger to the corporate boardroom. She is a director of seven major corporations--four manufacturing and three service--and last year was named one of the country’s “50 most influential corporate directors” by the American Management Assn.

She is also in her fourth term as a member of the presidentially appointed advisory committee for trade policy and negotiations.

Friends said that one of Franklin’s hallmarks is her sense of humor. Knauer said that Franklin and her husband sent out a Christmas card this year depicting their own version of “American Gothic.”

It showed the couple standing in front of their farm, Barnes holding a pitchfork and Franklin dressed in city clothes, carrying a suitcase labeled “Washington.”

Times staff writer Don Shannon contributed to this story.

Profile: Barbara Franklin

Hometown: Lancaster, Pa.

Education: Was graduated from Pennsylvania State University with distinction in 1962; in 1964 was one of the first women to earn an MBA from Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration.

Career highlights: Heads her own corporate consulting company, Franklin Associates, in Washington. She was an original member of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, after serving as women’s advocate in the Nixon White House. She has been active in Republican politics and in fund raising.

Personal: She and her husband, businessman Wallace Barnes, have homes in both the capital and in Bristol, Conn.