Time magazine named three women its Persons of the Year for 2002: Sherron Watkins of Enron, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom. Each first raised the problem inside her own organization.
Watkins, an Enron vice president, wrote to chairman Kenneth Lay that the company’s accounting methods were improper. Rowley, an FBI staff attorney, wrote to Director Robert Mueller that the bureau had “brushed off pleas” from its Minneapolis office to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui. Cooper told WorldCom’s board that the company had hidden “$3.8 billion in losses.”
Time called them “women of ordinary demeanor but exceptional guts and sense.” Cooper said: “I’m not a hero. I’m just doing my job.”