There are pros and cons to USAA's status as a financial services company that markets itself exclusively to the country's 60 million active-duty military personnel, veterans and their families. Given ever-expanding federal spending on things military and a seemingly endless string of conflicts, USAA has been able to ride out the nation's periodic downturns, including the latest deep dive, fairly unscathed. But the challenge is making all of its services accessible to customers who may be in North Carolina or New Jersey one day and deployed in a remote valley of Afghanistan the next.

As CFO, Matus also oversees the San Antonio-based company's chief risk officer and chief investment officer, and spends a lot of her time pondering the "what ifs" facing USAA and how to deal with them. She stepped into the CFO role in 2008 just ahead of the big financial crisis, after running USAA's life insurance unit, so she's had plenty of opportunity to do just that.

USAA, with $17.9 billion in 2010 revenue, is not just an insurance company, but also a full-service retail bank, an investment service, a wealth management service and a mutual fund manager. Matus worked during the crisis not just to keep USSA solvent, but growing. The company didn't participate in the TARP program, and "never lost its financial strength," Matus says.