'We Can Deliver Customers on a Global Basis'

The Ultimate Global Citizen

If the initial rise of the Internet as a business tool helped to put the single-minded geeks in charge, the second phase of its evolution, the globalization phase, plays to the strengths of more-worldly executives like Heather Killen. Emblematic of the urbane multiculturalists who now predominate Yahoo!'s managerial top ranks, Killen is one of five top officers born outside the United States. The daughter of former Australian cabinet minister Sir James Killen, she moved to France in 1980 to study language and communications theory at the Université de Paris III, then got an MBA at New York's Columbia Business School. Add a few years in London and in Paris with Ziff-Davis, when she started helping launch Yahoo!'s European operations. Then add several more years at Yahoo!'s Santa Clara headquarters, as well as a travel schedule that in two months took her to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, England, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Thailand -- and you've got the makings of the quintessential global citizen.

Part manager, part saleswoman, part diplomat, Killen switches roles as readily as she switches languages (she's fluent in English, French, and German). She peppers her speech with a colorful Valley-Girl-meets-the-Sorbonne mix of colloquialisms and pithy expressions that colleagues have come to call "Heatherisms." She employs them in even the most formal situations, relentlessly pushing Yahoo!'s open, more-is-better strategy for delivering content and for forging partnerships, whether she is indoctrinating new recruits, dining with Chinese dignitaries in Beijing, or convincing a Brazilian media billionaire to enter a content partnership.

"She's our ambassador," says Chief Yahoo! Jerry Yang, 33, the company cofounder who has tag teamed with Killen on several world tours. "Being a female executive in a global business can be very intimidating. But Heather is fearless, and she's found the right mix of showing respect yet not being a pushover."

That sense of diplomacy was in full evidence at a recent meeting in Beijing where, typically, Killen was the only woman. After negotiations with officials from China's ministry of foreign trade, Yang and Killen were treated to a lavish "emperor's banquet." A translator detailed the ingredients of each dish as it arrived. But when the soup course came, a mumbled exchange in Chinese ensued between Yang and the meal's host. "It's okay," Yang finally said with a smile. "You can tell her."

The host's face turned beet red. "The soup," he explained apologetically, "is from sex organ of male ox."

Unfazed, Killen took a hearty spoonful, then lifted her head and smiled. "I'm sure it will make us all very powerful and prosperous," she said as everyone in the group erupted in giggles of relief.

Bowing to local customs is one thing, but backing down from Yahoo!'s global principles is another matter entirely. In one recent case in France, Killen even went so far as to defend the rights of U.S. Yahoo! members to be able to auction off such items as Nazi paraphernalia. Because French law bans the sale of such items, anti-Semitism watchdog groups recently petitioned French courts to block access by French citizens to Yahoo!'s U.S. auction site, where those items, illegal in France, have been available for purchase. A decision is still pending in the case.

Killen says that such a ban should not be allowed. "It's not reasonable for one company to simultaneously obey the laws of every country in the world," she says, noting that Yahoo.com is governed by U.S. law, not French law. "I'm sure that there are French sites that the U.S. government might object to, or U.S. sites that the Singaporeans might object to. But if we start holding every site to the highest common standard of legality or appropriateness, where does it end? There would be no diversity of expression or culture, which is something that's very important to this company."

Think Globally, Act Glocally

Finding the sweet spot between the power of a global presence and the flexiblity of local empowerment may be Yahoo!'s toughest challenge. Dictate too strict a recipe for building new international sites, and you prevent people on the ground from adding the local flavor that's needed to win over users. Give people too much latitude to do what they please, though, and you not only risk diluting the brand, but you risk losing the advantages that come with standard technology platforms and marketing strategies. "We're always trying to balance the Lexus and the olive tree," says Killen, referring to Friedman's book, which uses the two symbols to represent the dichotomy between all things global and local. "And we have to do that in everything, from how we build the organization to how we build our Web sites."