Gattung, 44, the eldest of four daughters, once kept a clipping file of newspaper stories about successful businesswomen in Australia and New Zealand. Since 1999, she has been one herself, overseeing New Zealand's largest telecommunications company. She has also been shepherding the company away from fixed-line telephone service toward mobile telephony and broadband, which saw a 122% increase in connections last year. This has put pressure on margins, and the company reported a loss in 2005, including impairment charges, of $288 million on revenues of $3.9 billion.