In 2001 a woman assumed the top job at a major U.S. chemical company for the very first time. Fran Keeth became president and CEO of Shell Chemicals LP. Keeth joined Shell in 1970 as a secretary, pursuing her business degree at night. She rose through the ranks, eventually taking charge of the company’s finances and internal operations. As CEO she promotes more efficient uses of natural resources as a goal for her company. She has represented this concern for the whole of the chemical industry as chair of the American Chemical Council’s Committee on Responsible Care.

About Her Life

Fran Keeth (born 1946) did not become an important person in the world of chemistry by doing chemistry, teaching chemistry, or even studying chemistry. Rather, she studied business and law at the University of Houston. Every payday in the tax department at Shell, where she worked as a typist, Keeth deposited her check and those of the 26 men for whom she worked. She could not help noticing that hers was the smallest check by far. She concluded that the difference was that the men all had college degrees while she did not, and so she enrolled in evening courses at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. Subsequently, she completed an MBA and a law degree at the University of Houston—the last completed when her son was just a newborn.

She worked her way up the corporate ladder at Shell, mostly in positions where she was in charge of financial operations. In 1992 she was sent to London to work at Shell Oil's parent company, Royal Dutch/Shell, where she held several positions of considerable authority. She left in 1996 to become worldwide financial controller for Mobil Oil for a year before returning to Shell. This time she was made vice president at Shell Chemical, the chemical subsidiary of the corporation. She was promoted to president and CEO in 2001.

Keeth has reflected that her ascent in the corporation as a woman may have been less fraught with pitfalls since she rose through the path of finance rather than through one of the more common routes, such as product management or sales and marketing, which have historically been identified with men.