Fidelity's McColgan has higher profile

Fidelity Investments is emerging from its shell.

In promoting Ellyn A. McColgan to oversee nearly half its 42,000 employees this week , the Boston mutual fund giant elevated an executive who has already become one of the more outgoing figures at the company since the days of star fund manager Peter Lynch.

Around Massachusetts McColgan, 53, is well-known for her frequent speeches and appearances, a stark contrast to members of the famously reticent Johnson family who still lead Fidelity and control just under half the private firm's shares.

Jan Shubert, acting director of the Center for Women's Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, says McColgan often goes out of her way to meet with undergraduates on short notice, and also gave a graduation speech in 2005.

In several appearances, Shubert said, McColgan has given similar advice on how young women can succeed in business: "Think big. Be bold. Be brave. And sometimes, wear red."

"It's an admonition to women and all young leaders, regardless of their gender," Shubert said, "You can have all the ideas you want to have, but if nobody knows about them, what good are they?"

In her new role, McColgan faces a challenge with Fidelity's mutual fund business, whose performance has fallen far behind competitors. In the Fidelity hierarchy, her ascension also positions McColgan as the rough equal of Abigail Johnson, the 45-year-old daughter of Edward C. "Ned" Johnson III, Fidelity's 76-year-old chairman. Both are viewed as candidates to succeed Edward Johnson.

McColgan was traveling and not available for comment yesterday, a spokesman said.

Thinking big was also part of a 2004 talk she gave for the Commonwealth Institute, a Boston nonprofit that supports female entrepreneurs and senior executives. According to an audio interview posted on the group's website, she said: "You have to try new things and things that have never been done before. And they should be big, not small, little, incremental things, but big wins up on a board," she said.

McColgan also repeated the aphorism that failure is a good teacher. She alluded to suffering a few herself, though she gave no details. "The good news is that now I know what works and what doesn't work. I can smell it in the air, if there's something that can cause us to fail, and the likelihood is that I might be able to prevent it the second time around," she said.

Also, employees who succeed should be rewarded and recognized, even for routine wins. "We convince people that their contribution to the organization matters a great deal. And over time, people want to be part of that. They want to have confidence, they want to be part of a winning team," she said.

Aileen Gorman, the Commonwealth Institute's executive director, said McColgan gave a "captivating" talk around the same time, and more recently had Gorman's group run a pair of daylong panel discussions for its own women employees. "She's a very natural leader, and I don't think she thinks twice about it," Gorman said.

The daughter of a pipe fitter, McColgan, earned a degree in psychology from Montclair State University in New Jersey as the first in her family to go to college, then an MBA from Harvard Business School, according to her corporate biography. She joined Fidelity in 1990 after working on Wall Street, and ran various services divisions involved in products like the 401(k) retirement plans it administers. In 2002, she became head of Fidelity's brokerage business, which has grown to administer accounts worth $1.7 trillion, the most of any firm.

Paul Mulligan, a former colleague of McColgan's at Fidelity who now teaches management at Babson, said he remembers her as a detail-oriented manager who bears down on subordinates to know their area of responsibility deeply. "Don't go to a meeting with Ellyn unprepared," Mulligan said. "She makes it very clear it's not acceptable. There's no detail that's too small for her."

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.