Siemens picks first woman for top management post

This November, Siemens named Barbara Kux to its management board, making her the first senior woman executive in the German conglomerate’s 160-year history, as well as the first among industrial German blue chips. The Swiss-born 54-year-old, who had been chief procurement officer at rival Philips since 2003, will head Siemens’s new supply chain management organisation and be responsible for its annual global procurement of 42 billion euros ($53.02 billion). The appointment expands the Siemens management board to nine members. Siemens Chief Executive Officer Peter Loescher, who joined Siemens in May 2007 and was the first outsider appointed as its CEO, has said “cultural diversity” is one of his priorities. Last month he named Jill Lee, a former chief financial officer at Siemens China since 2004, as the company’s first chief diversity officer. “The management board was all white males. Our top 600 managers are predominantly white males. We are too one-dimensional,” he told the Financial Times newspaper.

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