Three years ago, when Touraine started her own multi-media company in France with 25 employees, she could not have imagined herself as the CEO of VUP. Her meteoric rise to power is in part attributable to the dizzying global culture of mergers and acquisitions of the late 1990's and part due to the vision of her boss, Jean-Marie Messier. Messier is the Chairman of VUP's parent company,Vivendi Universal, and the man who has occupied center stage of the global media business ever since transforming Vivendi from a staid French utility to a global media giant. During a dizzying shopping spree in 2001, Messier orchestrated a series of high-profile strategic deals valued at $60 billion--the latest being a $10.3-billion deal with mogul Barry Diller's USA Networks that would give Vivendi access to more than 84 million US television viewers. Just days earlier, Messier had put down $1.5 billion for a 10-percent stake in Charlie Ergen's pay-TV group EchoStar, itself set to take over rival DirecTV. EchoStar and DirecTV would together give Vivendi access to 15 million homes for its content. Earlier in 2000, Messier bought Seagram's and its prized Universal Music from Edgar Bronfman Jr.

In doing so, Monsieur Messier became, at 45, by far the youngest and, arguably, one of the brashest of today's media barons, putting his company on an equal footing with rivals AOL Time Warner and Disney. To size up Messier's personality, one only has to look to the title of his 247-page autobiography published last year in France: "J6M.com." The acronym in the French bestseller's title stands for "Jean-Marie Messier, Moi-Même, Maître du Monde." In English, that's "Jean-Marie Messier, Me, Myself, Master of the World."

"He has an incredible vision. It is astonishing to see what he has managed to accomplish in just three years," Touraine said recently in an interview at the New York Peninsula Hotel. She had just flown in from VUP's headquarters in Paris and was scheduled to meet with Messier the next morning at 7:30 AM for their bi-weekly strategy meeting. They were scheduled to fly the same day to Salt Lake City for a corporate retreat with 25 other executives to strategize about new products and services and to explore the synergies between the various Vivendi businesses. Touraine, who became the CEO of VUP last September, seems like an unusual candidate for her job. Her style is in contrast to her flamboyant boss: she is modest, low-key and unassuming and, for the most part, stays out of the spotlight. She laughs easily, speaks softly but holds strong opinions. She also masks a high-wattage intellect behind verbal modesty, which is disarming and charming at the same time.

"I can be replaced easily," she said. "It is unusual for a publishing head not to have a publishing background." But Touraine's modesty belies her toughness and considerable accomplishments. She has a track record of success and talent for growing a company and managing a diverse group of people. Behind the scenes, she is every bit as ambitious as her boss. Touraine has been largely responsible for the present global reach of VUP. She has grown the company to a $3.4-billion entity that derives 50 percent of its revenue from the US, 37 percent from Europe, and 6 percent from Latin America.

VUP holds leading positions in all areas of content creation including literature, reference, education, educational software, games and consumer press. Largely through Touraine's acumen, VUP has expanded through a series of acquisitions to become the world's number-three publishing conglomerate.

"I strongly believe that, in this business, to make a difference you have to be in the top three in the world," she said. "VUP had the largest market share in France, about 55 percent, but it was vital for us to expand as France is a very small part of a huge market." VUP is also the world's second-largest educational and reference publisher behind the UK's Pearson. It gained that distinction following Touraine's 2001 purchase of one of America's most prestigious publishers, Houghton Mifflin, publisher of J.R.R. Tolkien. Two Houghton Mifflin authors were recently awarded the Pulitzer prize: Jhumpa Lahiri for 'Interpreter of Maladies' (in 2000) and Philip Roth for 'American Pastoral'(1998). Touraine also expanded the games division of VUP by striking a deal with Tolkien Enterprises to license a line of "Lord of the Rings" video games.

Touraine's rise to corporate power has been partly due to her talent and partly to luck. A series of mergers and acquisitions catapulted her to the position of CEO in 2001.

After completing a Masters in Business Administration at Columbia University in New York, Touraine joined the Paris office of McKinsey and Company in 1981. She was the only woman consultant in the office at the time. In 1985, she left McKinsey to head the Consumer Publishing Division of Hachette, one of the most important publishers in France. In 1995, the entrepreneurial streak drove Touraine to start her own multimedia company, Liris Interactive. Liris was one of France's first multimedia start ups.

Started with 25 people to build education software, it was hugely profitable and merged with Havas at the end of 1997. Touraine was undoubtedly pleased as Havas was France's oldest and largest media company at the time. Touraine became the Executive Vice President in charge of consumer products of Havas and a member of the board of directors. The breakthrough for Touraine came three years later. In 2000, as part of Messier's global strategy of mergers and acquisitions, Vivendi, then called CGE, bought out Havas and officially became Vivendi Universal Publishing. Touraine was appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company in September 2001. "When I joined the subsidiary of Havas," Touraine said, "I did not know that one day it would become a part of Vivendi and I would be in the executive committee. It was pure coincidence." The coincidence has led to rapid growth for the company and a big jump in salary, bonus and stock options for Touraine.

Does Touraine have any advice for women seeking success in a corporate environment where so few of them rise to the top to become CEOs? Speaking at the recently concluded World Economic Forum, she articulated her view: "Women have to position themselves in the profit-and-loss side of business in order for them to lead companies. The issue is not lack of women in the pipeline. The problem is that women are in the wrong places in the pipeline, and the pipeline is leaking."

Touraine, who effortlessly manages to juggle a high-powered career and a family life that includes two children, added that her path had been made easier by Messier's commitment to encourage women's growth at Vivendi.

"Unless stereotypes and preconceptions about women's abilities, commitment and leadership style are challenged at the very top, women will find it hard to rise," she said. Touraine also stressed that women's self-confidence will be boosted when the myth of the "superwoman" is dispelled. "Most women are insecure in taking the risk to become a superwoman," she said. "It is not necessary or realistic to aspire to be an ideal mother, an ideal partner and an ideal leader."

Asked about future plans for the company, Touraine said that they are closely tied to tapping into the two significant trends that are shaping the publishing industry: digitalization of content and globalization. "Because of these two factors, the way readers will access books in the future--and who will be able to access them- will rapidly change." Touraine explained that digitalization will allow content to reside in databases so that books can be easily reprinted, re-used and customized at a much cheaper cost. School content can, for instance, be customized for the curriculum in California versus that in Florida. Even schoolteachers in Asia and Africa could access it in a language and format suitable for their students. But this technology is still five to ten years away.

"Publishing will always be about talent and good writers, but technology will certainly help," said Touraine. Her own future success will be measured by how fast she can adapt VUP to tap into these emerging technologies and markets. But with her track record in multimedia and management she is well positioned to help VUP sustain its dominance in the market.

"As more and more countries adopt democratic models worldwide, education will be the key driver for economic growth," she said. "My vision is to tap into these emerging markets and make books and education accessible to these countries through new technologies. It's a win-win situation for everyone."