(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ten years ago Jill Barad, then a junior manager in the boys' toys division at Mattel, went to Tom Kalinske, the senior vice president who had hired her, and said, ''Okay, I'm ready now. Give me a bigger challenge.'' His reply: ''I was waiting for you to say that.'' He assigned her to Barbie dolls. In 1988, the year Barad took over that business, sales hovered around $485 million. The figure has since more than doubled to nearly $1 billion. Mattel's earnings over that time proved as resilient as Barbie's curls, springing from a $113 million loss in 1987 to a $113 million profit last year. President and chief operating officer since mid-July, Barad never expected to end up the reigning diva of toydom. Raised in New York City, she graduated from Queens College and, perhaps because her father was television director Lawrence Elikann (Falcon Crest, Knots Landing), aspired to be an actress. A single day in front of the cameras in a 1973 Dino De Laurentiis film called Crazy Joe changed her mind. She moved to California and worked for a cosmetics maker and an ad agency before joining Mattel. Among her first projects at the company: an icky toy called A Bad Case of Worms. Designed to be slammed against a wall, whence it would slither slimily to the floor, the thing was aptly named -- and has since disappeared. ''I think everyone thought I managed out of that well,'' says Barad. Ten promotions later, she runs a staff of more than 1,000 worldwide but relies too on the judgment of sons Alexander, 12, and Justin, 9 -- with now and then a comment from husband Thomas Barad, an independent film producer. Pleasing little customers can yield big money. When Barad signed on with Mattel in 1981, she earned $38,000 a year. In 1991, as head of operations for North America, she had a pay package that came to $711,539. Not too shabby a decade. ''We all have to get the best people we can get,'' she says. ''And you won't get the best people if they don't feel they'll have a chance to rise.'' Some of the best people won't ever know the chance is there or not -- unless, as Barad did, they ask for it.