Rometty replaced Palmissano as CEO while he stayed on as chairman.
When Burk was leading her fight to open Augusta to women, the Masters did away with television sponsors for two years to keep them out of the fray. When corporate sponsorship returned for the 2005 Masters, only IBM came back. Coca-Cola and Citigroup did not.
Burk doesn't consider her campaign a complete failure, even though it fizzled at a protest during the third round of the 2003 tournament in a parking lot down the street from the club. Without that protest, "this wouldn't be on the table now."
Just like that, she is back in the news.
After CNN, she was to tape a segment for "NBC Nightly News" later Friday. She might get a phone call once a month on the Augusta membership, and now can't keep track of who's calling.
Augusta won the first battle. This time, Burk believes there potentially are two enemies of equal rights for women.
"The company has a huge responsibility here not to undermine its first female CEO," she said on CNN. "If they accept anything less than full membership — or resign their sponsorship, which is another option — they're going to undermine their new CEO. And they'll be making a statement that they don't consider her an equal to her predecessors."
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