Jean Head Sisco; Management Consultant Served on Corporate Boards

Jean Head Sisco, 74, a management consultant who became one of an elite group of prominent female academicians sought by corporate boards. Sisco, a Texas native, always wanted a business career. At the University of Chicago business school, where she earned her master’s degree, her advisor steered her into retailing, one of the few fields open to women. She started as an executive trainee at the Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago in 1947, where a saleswoman gave her advice that she followed for the rest of her career: “Always wear a hat. A hat disarms men, and they won’t ask you to pour coffee or take notes,” she told an interviewer for Washingtonian magazine in 1994, when she was named to the Washington Business Hall of Fame. By 1953, Sisco was one of the top five executives at the Washington-based Woodward & Lothrop chain. In 1974, she became the consultant for government and public affairs for the American Retail Federation. Later, she opened her own consulting business, Sisco Associates. She was the first female member of the Board of Trade. More recently, she was a director for Textron, Santa Fe Pacific, Santa Fe Pacific Gold, the Neiman Marcus Group, Chiquita Brands International and K-Tron International. She also headed the National Assn. of Corporate Directors. In civic affairs, she was treasurer of Reading Is Fundamental and president of the Washington Ballet. Believing that real advances for women are made quietly, she once explained how she rose to the top: “I lit one candle, and when that took flame, I lit another.” On Thursday at her home in Chevy Chase, Md., of a brain tumor.