MINNEAPOLIS _ Corie Barry never saw herself in one of the top jobs at Best Buy.
That began to change in the fall of 2012 when she met her new boss at the nation's largest electronics chain. Barry was a vice president at the time, waiting to meet the company's next chief financial officer and fully expecting a man in a suit.
Instead, she did a double take when the petite Sharon McCollam breezed in, wearing an impeccable dress and designer shoes along with an air of confidence and friendliness.
"I literally thought I might run up and hug her," said Barry, 42, in a recent interview over sushi at the company's suburban Minneapolis headquarters. "I felt like my whole life had changed."
In many ways, it did. McCollam, who became a key figure in Best Buy's storied turnaround, immediately saw potential in Barry and began grooming Barry to be her successor. Last year, when McCollam retired, Barry replaced her as the CFO of the $40 billion company.
Soon after, Barry was stunned to discover she was one of only about 70 female CFOs in the Fortune 500, or less than 15 percent. It was a stark reminder of how much of a glass ceiling remains in the executive suites and boardrooms of corporate America. While growing in number, there are still only about 32 female CEOs among the nation's largest 500 companies.
"It really blew my mind when I first looked up the stats," Barry said at a recent women-in-business event in Minneapolis.
But it's been a different story at Best Buy in recent years. Barry is part of a major sea change in the retailer's C-Suite, where women now hold nearly half the positions _ and at times have outnumbered men. And 40 percent of Best Buy's board members are women, compared with the nationwide average of 20 percent.
In addition to matching online prices and partnering with some of the tech industry's biggest brands, company executives and industry analysts say a key ingredient of Best Buy's turnaround has been building a diverse and high-caliber leadership team.
"It's no accident that it had a good number of women on it," Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said. "For us, it's part of our secret weapon."
It's a significant change for a company long dominated by men, as well as a stark contrast to the headlines coming out of Silicon Valley these days, where recent sexual harassment scandals at places like Uber have given the tech industry a reputation for hostility to women.
