Helen Alexander, former CEO of The Economist Group, died on August 5th

position models for girls in company are nevertheless too rare, now not least in Britain. final November an independent evaluation backed by the govt entreated FTSE 100 corporations to carry the share of women on their boards from 27% to 33% by using 2020. sadly, that push this week lost one in all its leading champions, Helen Alexander, the deputy chair of the overview.

business had no stronger ambassador. She became self-effacing however a global-class networker—a winning aggregate that helps explain, along with her intelligence and charm, why all forms of firms desired her on their board (from Northern meals to Centrica, Rolls-Royce and the British arm of Huawei), to propose them (Bain Capital) or to chair them (the Port of London Authority and, extra currently, UBM, an movements business). In 2009 she became the first girl to be president of the Confederation of British industry, the country’s leading employers’ group.

however Helen had built her acceptance in the media trade. From 1997 to 2008 she turned into chief government of The Economist neighborhood (the writer of this newspaper), the business she joined as a advertising and marketing government in 1985. during her tenure, profits soared and The Economist’s circulation more than doubled, to 1.3m.

Her success owed an awful lot to a management trend that lacked fireworks and didn’t seek repute, but deserved more cognizance, for each its humanity and effectiveness. Helen relied on a quiet wisdom: listening, not lecturing. No identify changed into ever forgotten, no thoughtful very own gesture become too small. For the entire in vogue fascination with large strategy, she turned into unerringly good and, the place want be, decisive: nothing foolish would take place on her watch. She treated her colleagues with admire, set an illustration of self-discipline and strong values (the diary always cleared time for family), and in return impressed self belief. “you could have confidence Helen fully,” changed into the notice from one Economist editor to his successor.

although she might seem quintessentially British (St Paul’s girls’ college, Oxford tuition), she was also thoroughly global. She adored visiting to the Olympic games, where the world got here collectively in first rate-spirited competition. Her mother changed into Russian (with roots in Estonia), her grandmother had been Maxim Gorky’s lover; Helen’s MBA became from INSEAD in France and he or she changed into a stalwart of an annual Franco-British gathering referred to as the Colloque. France awarded her the Légion d’Honneur in November 2015.

At her acceptance speech on the French embassy in London, delivered in flawless French, her one pause to bring together herself came when thanking her husband and three babies for his or her guide in her battle against cancer, which had been clinically determined a couple of year earlier. Helen approached that battle as she did all else: head on, admirably, a class act.

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