In 1997, when Linda Albornoz was a director for American Express based in Houston, her husband received a great job offer requiring them to move to San Francisco. Eleven years ago, at most companies that would have meant Albornoz either quit or asked for a reassignment to a desk job, effectively committing career suicide.

Instead, her boss let her set up a virtual office, giving her the flexibility that eventually helped her rise to her current position of vice president, Business to Business (B2B) Payment Solutions. In between, Albornoz and her husband had a daughter, now 7, and they continued to both succeed in their demanding jobs.

Andrea L. Hazard’s been with AT&T for 14 years, starting with its predecessor company SBC right out of college with a marketing degree. Today, she is premier client sales director, Global Enterprise Solutions. Ten years ago, she moved into enterprise sales and has worked in Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City, St. Louis (three times), Dallas (twice), Minneapolis and Nashville. Along the way, she got married and, seven months ago, had her first child, a son. Her husband, who works in telecommunications sales for a different company, relocated with her when she was pregnant, but Hazard realizes that her days of living in a different city virtually every year are going to have to end, especially when her son reaches school age.

For Valerie Oswalt, a meteoric rise in sales at Kraft Foods has also meant frequent relocations. A certified public accountant, she joined Kraft in 1996 after two years at Deloitte. She started in sales finance at Kraft Foods and moved into more senior roles as Kraft paid for her MBA at Kellogg University at Northwestern. Today, Oswalt is customer vice president of business development for Sales & Customer Logistics and the mother of two children, Scott William, 6, and Lauren, 4.

“I’ve moved from Chicago to Boston to southern California to Dallas to Arkansas to Northern California,” she says, noting that this included being customer vice president for Kraft’s relationship with Walmart (overseeing more than $2 billion in revenue) and being area vice president, customer logistics, for the West Coast.

How have these three women managed what to many women seems impossible: combining active careers in revenue-generating positions and young families? The answer lies not with these particular women, impressive as they are, but with their companies—The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity that consciously provide flexibility and options for women in P&L roles. These companies understand that these positions are usually the way into the top level (CEO and direct reports) and want to make sure women are not excluded.

What the Data Shows

Their numbers reflect that effort. DiversityInc studied seven companies in different industries with strong initiatives to help women in revenue-generating roles. They (and their 2011 DiversityInc Top 50 ranks) are: PricewaterhouseCoopers, No. 3; AT&T, No. 4; Ernst & Young, No. 5; Kraft Foods, No. 9; Colgate-Palmolive Co., No. 10; American Express Co., No. 13; and Procter & Gamble, No. 25.

We found a significant difference in their results. When compared with the 535 companies that participated in the 2011 DiversityInc Top 50 survey, these seven companies had 15 percent more women in P&L roles, 23 percent more women in the top level (CEO and direct reports) and 22 percent more women in the top 10 percent highest-paid employees in the company.

How do they do it? What best practices do they use that enable them to hold on and promote female talent at this level? The key word is “flexibility.”

Read the full text of this article at www.DiversityIncBestPractices.com.