In the corporate world, it is rare to find executiveswho say they're happy to stay in their current job. Assistanttreasurers long to be treasurers, treasurers hope to be CFOs, andCFOs have their eye on a CEO's corner office. That's not the casefor Sally Curley, though. The senior vice president for globalinvestor relations at Cardinal Health, a $103 billion drugdistribution company, says she sees herself as a “pro inplace.”

“A lot of investor relations people see this job as a steppingstone, and it is true that many investor relations directors movethrough finance and—if they get treasury or controllerexperience—can move up to CFO,” Curley says. “You definitely needinvestor relations experience to be a CFO!”

“I am not saying I wouldn't be interested in managing a unit,”she adds. “But I like being where I am.” Hers has certainly been anexciting, challenging tenure, “and a high-stress one,” shesays.

Curley worked in investor relations at Genzyme Corp. for nineyears before joining Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health four yearsago. At Cardinal, she found herself tasked with overseeing theinvestor relations aspects of a major spinoff: CareFusion, the $4billion medical equipment manufacturing unit of Cardinal, at thetime an $87 billion company.

“We had determined in 2008 that the manufacturing unit made moresense as a standalone operation, for both financial and culturalreasons,” she explains. But that meant Curley not only had toexplain the deal to Cardinal Health's analysts and investors, butalso needed to sell it to potential investors and find analysts whowould follow the new company.

“Our analysts were basically covering the drug distributionindustry, and they didn't really know how to value CareFusion,”Curley says. “So my team and I had to track down sell-side analystswho knew the medical equipment industry and who would be interestedin following a $4 billion company.”

Having spent 26 years in the healthcare industry really helpedthere, she says. “I had a good Rolodex.”

The company announced the transaction in 2008. “It was anextremely hard time to be doing a spinoff,” she says, andultimately, the deal took 14 months to complete. When it wasconcluded in September 2009, instead of spinning off 100% ofCareFusion as originally planned, Cardinal Health ended up holding20% of the shares, which it sold off over time.

In the end, analysts and investors liked the deal, and theshares of both companies rose 30% in the wake of the spinoff.

Just to keep things interesting, in January2009, CFO Jeff Henderson suggested that Curley and CardinalHealth's treasurer and controller work on a “shareholder model,” aprocess that resulted in Cardinal's boosting its dividendsignificantly and selling investors on the idea of looking at thecompany in terms of both earnings and yield.

“We interviewed 100 shareholders and found that there was muchmore interest in dividends than a share buyback,” she says, “so wedecided to increase our dividend 25% after the spinoff.”

As a result, Cardinal, long viewed as a core-value investment byinvestors, has become more of a core-value, growth and incomeasset, she says.

Curley says her biggest challenge is managing the volume ofinformation her job requires. “My approach is color coding,” shelaughs. “I get 200 to 300 e-mails a day. If it's not essential, itgets color-coded for the weekend and I take care of it onSundays.”

Her other solution: “After 9 p.m., I don't check e-mail. I onlyanswer the phone. My executives have that number.”

See the full 2012 Women in Finance list here.